Les Jones

Quotes > "All those people all those lives / Where are they now?"

"All those people! All those lives! Where are they now?"
 -- Kaufmann and Hart, The Man Who Came to Dinner

Smiths fan know the line from "Cemetery Gates" from "The Queen is Dead" album, but Morissey was borrowing it from the play. A female character had been to Pompeii, I think, and made the remark.

Ironically or not, one of the themes in the Morissey song is borrowing other people's work.

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
While Wilde is on mine

So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
All those people all those lives
Where are they now?
With the loves and hates
And passions just like mine
They were born
And then they lived and then they died
Seems so unfair
And I want to cry

You say: "ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well, and I've heard them said
A hundred times, maybe less, maybe more

If you must write prose and poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loans"
There's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
Who'll trip you up and laugh
When you fall

You say: "ere long done do does did"
Words which could only be your own
And then you then produce the text
From whence was ripped
Some dizzy whore
Eighteen hundred and four