Spelled Quotes & Sayings

Diaper spelled backwards is repaid , think about it. — Marshall McLuhan

I saw your name in lights last night. It's the middle of the night, and I can't sleep, thinking all my trumpeting thoughts, and I get out of bed, open the curtains, and look into the night full of stars, and you know what I saw? Your name. Like the stars joined up and spelled the word for me. Like a sign. — Jaclyn Moriarty

My parents got carried away with the letter P when they were naming the kids in our family. There's me, Paula, my sisters Peggy and Patty, and my brother Pjimmy, spelled with a silent P. — Paula Poundstone

Isaac knows how stupid i find these things, and he finds them just as stupid as i do. like lol. now, if there's anything stupider than buddy lists, it's lol. if anyone ever uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it's not like anyone's laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person's tongue does. loll. loll. i can't think any more. loll. loll! — David Levithan

They were waiting for me in the books and in stories, after all, hiding inside the twenty six characters and a handful of punctuation marks. These letters and words, when placed in the right order, would conjure all manner of exotic beasts and people from the shadows, would reveal the motives and minds of insects and of cats. They were spells, spelled with words to make worlds, waiting for me, in the pages of books. — Neil Gaiman

With automatic spell checkers running unleashed over what we compose, our era is that of correctly spelled typos. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

But I am a writer, and I deal in words, and I need to have them spelled out for me
precisely. — Sydney Jane Baily

With children Love is spelled TIME. — Zig Ziglar

When other girls had tea parties on the playground, I brought out my secondhand Ouija board and attempted to raise the dead. While my classmates gave book reports on The Wind In The Willows or Charlotte's Web, I did mine on tattered, paperback copies of Stephen King novels that I'd borrowed from my grandmother. Instead of Sweet Valley High, I read books about zombies and vampires. Eventually, my third grade teacher called my mother in to discuss her growing concerns over my behavior, and my mom nodded blithely, but failed to see what the problem was. When Mrs. Johnson handed her my recent book report on Pet Sematary,, my mom wrinkled her forehead with concern and disapproval. "Oh, I see,"she said disappointingly, as she turned to me. "You spelled 'cemetery' wrong." Then I explained that Stephen King had spelled it that way on purpose, and she nodded, saying, "Ah. Well, good enough for me. — Jenny Lawson

Perhaps nothing speaks more eloquently of the variability of spelling in the age than the fact that a dictionary published in 1604, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, spelled "words" two ways on the title page. — Bill Bryson

My real name is Mica, spelled with a C. My dad is called Michael. He wanted me to be called Michael but my mother said over her dead body. She wasn't into the whole junior thing. — Mika.

However much he, as a reflective adult, modified her attitudes and diluted her prejudices, much of his instinctive outlook was formed by this fierce, unbending woman, so that in many ways Jesus's worldview is already spelled out in the Magnificat, the — Thomas Cahill

Who you were," Lyre corrected, wiping his hand across the trickling blood on his face, smearing it over one cheek. "But it doesn't matter. You're still female." Natania's eyes narrowed, then she threw her head back and loosed a chiming peal of laughter. "You think you can defeat me with aphrodesia?" Lyre's eyes darkened to black. "I already have." Natania took a quick step back, her hand clenching around the Sahar as power leaped into her. Lyre's hand snapped down the front of his shirt where he kept his chain of spelled gems. He yanked it out, blood-coated fingers already clenched around a gem. Gold light flashed. The world went black. — Annette Marie

With her purple hair, leather jacket with a decal of two dragons on the back, and tough-as-nails boots, Mal had trouble written all over her - which was precisely what she was going for. The bilious green spray paint spelled out LONG LIVE EVIL. Mal holstered her paint can, reveled in her work, and stepped into the bustling marketplace, where she was quickly swept up in the throng and blended into the sea of haggard, worn faces. — Walt Disney Company

There are few, if any, Canadian men that have never spelled their name in a snow bank. — Douglas Coupland

People approach writers, assuming we pull a perfect text out of our nose each time (well spelled). Spelling is the least of it. — Sara Levine

JP Morgan spelled it out: for neoliberalism to survive, democracy must fade. — Paul Mason

He'd probably disappear into a puff of smoke that spelled out "nope" in the air if Kelly told him he'd proposed while drugged. — Abigail Roux

Our family became spelled after my ancestor pixed off two evil witch sisters. The witches' curse was supposed to doom my great- great- great grandmother to turn evil and torch the world - except the spell wasn't worded right. It didn't spec-ify which Emerald princess. So ever since, all the girls in the Emerald family have been stuck inside, since there's no way to know what generation will inherit the curse. — Betsy Schow

Man's destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. — Jacques Monod

Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled. — Mark Twain

I kind of wanted someone to rearrange the stars so they spelled out his words. I needed them big and bright, and somewhere I could see then when things felt dark. I love you. And I'm so, so proud. — Kiera Cass

Beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city. — Toni Morrison

Desserts is just stressed spelled backwards. — G.A. Wilson

I thought about this for days, just as I thought of the special-ed teacher I met in Pittsburgh. "You know," I said, "I hear those words and automatically think Handicapped, or, Learning disabled. But aren't a lot of your students just assholes?"
"You got it," she said. Then she told me about a kid - last day of class - who wrote on the blackboard, "Mrs. J is a cock master."
I was impressed because I'd never heard that term before. She was impressed because the boy had spelled it correctly. — David Sedaris

True to a unique tradition of Rome, all the nearby walls had been slathered with that unique institution of the Latin race: graffiti. Daubed in paint of every color were slogans such as Death to the aristocrats! and The shade of Tribune Ateius calls out for blood! and May the curse of Ateius fall on Crassus and all his friends! All of this was scrawled wretchedly and spelled worse. Rome has an extremely high rate of literacy, mostly so that the citizens can practice this particular art form. — John Maddox Roberts

If you spelled George Morgan wrong on Google it didn't say, "Did you mean George Morgan?" It simply replied, "Run while you still have the chance. — Tara Sivec

Will gritted his teeth as Will Junior and Nellie continued their debate. He loved his son, but he found him
and many members of hisgeneration
ruthless in their pursuit of money and standing and harsh toward the less fortunate. He had reminded him on many occasions that both the McClanes and their mother's family
the Van der leydens
had at one time been immigrants. As had members of all the city's wealthy families. But Will's lectures made no difference to his son. He was an American. And those getting off the boat at Castle Garden were not. Italian, Irish, Chinese, Polish
nationality made no difference. They were lazy, stupid, and dirty. Their numbers spelled ruin for the country. p. 264 — Jennifer Donnelly

Whether it is spelled Bain and being put out by the Obama campaign or Bane and being out by Hollywood, the narratives are similar: a highly intelligent villain with offshore interests and a past both are seeking to cover up who had a powerful father and is set on pillaging society. — Chris Lehane

I once asked Axl why he left the 'E' off his name. He started crying and said he thought he'd spelled it right. — Slash

Insights into erotic life belong to art, not education. But sometimes these have to be spelled out for the illiterates. And it ismainly a matter of convincing the illiterates, for they are the ones who write the penal code. — Karl Kraus

Yes sir boss. Like the drink, only not spelled the same. — Stephen King

Over time, it also became important for me to share my management principles with the people I worked with because we had to agree on how we should be with each other - and that way is unique. Because the logic behind being radically honest and radically transparent with each other wasn't clear, it had to be spelled out in these principles. — Ray Dalio

If you don't have a personal definition of success, chances are you will succeed at the wrong thing. You'll get to the end of your life and realize that you spelled success wrong. And if you spell it wrong, you'll get it wrong. — Mark Batterson

Lots of people today would never consider themselves guilty of idolatry as far as it is spelled out in the Ten Commandments, but by reducing God to some benevolent "man upstairs" whose only attributes are love and tolerance, and who could not care less about sin, they truly have transgressed God's commandment. They have created a god in their mind who does not actually exist and will on the day of judgment, not be able to offer them any help. — Charlie Campbell

Many of the models in the literature are not general equilibrium models in my sense. Of those that are, most are intermediate in scope: broader than examples, but much narrower than the full general equilibrium model. They are narrower, not for carefully spelled out economic reasons, but for reasons of convenience. I don't know what to do with models like that, especially when the designer says he imposed restrictions to simplify the model or to make it more likely that conventional data will lead us to reject it. The full general equilibrium model is about as simple as a model can be: we need only a few equations to describe it, and each is easy to understand. The restrictions usually strike me as extreme. When we reject a restricted version of the general equilibrium model, we are not rejecting the general equilibrium model itself. So why bother "testing" the restricted version? If we reject it, we will just create another version. — Fischer Black

What is a spell after all but a way of coaxing syllables together so persuasively that some new word is spelled ... some imprecision clarified, some name Named ... and some change managed. — Gregory Maguire

Spelling a person's name is the first step toward killing him. It takes him apart and empties him of meaning. This is why God is afraid to have his name spelled. — Ben Marcus

We build deep and loving family relationships by doing simple things together, like family dinner and family home evening and by just having fun together. In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time. Taking time for each other is the key for harmony at home. We talk with, rather than about, each other. We learn from each other, and we appreciate our differences as well as our commonalities. We establish a divine bond with each other as we approach God together through family prayer, gospel study, and Sunday worship. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

First, the processes making for 'spatial equilibrium' - broadly spelled out in bourgeois location theory - are, from the Marxian perspective to be seen as part and parcel of the processes which lead to crises of accumulation. — Anonymous

Dog is God spelled backward. — Duane Chapman

One leading French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, famously proposed that climate and other conditions in the New World had led to the inevitable degeneration of its fauna and flora. Buffon's more enthusiastic readers extrapolated from this argument to call into question the virility and intelligence of both America's European settlers and its native inhabitants, the Indians. That sparked a rousing defense of American virtue and vigor from Jefferson, spelled out in his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia.20 — Jonathan Lyons

He hurried back. Walls seemed to shift and advance. Right here, it must be. Wasn't this passage too short? No, it wasn't a wall that blocked his way, only fog. The fog retreated before him - then at once yielded up a wall. Staggering crimson letters caught in the web of graffiti spelled KILLER. — Ramsey Campbell

The Soviet Union had achieved an unusual boon through the pact. The Eastern part of Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea was declared as their sphere of influence. They spelled out by name the three Baltic republics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - all three formerly, under the tsars, Russian territory. The two signatories included as part of the Soviet sphere of influence Bessarabia. Northern Bukovina had not been included in that sinister deal, yet Russia made its own decision to annex it, together with Bessarabia. They made it a kind of connecting bridge to Southern Poland. — Pearl Fichman

He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right. — Terry Pratchett

Trouble in our family is spelled with a capital C and has been as long as I can remember. The C stands for Charles. He's my older brother, two years and four months older to be exact. Ever since the phone call about him last night, I've felt incredibly tense. And now, at this very minute, my parents are driving up to Vermont, to Charles's boarding school, to find out if he's actually been kicked out or if he's just been suspended again. I — Judy Blume

Crucial to Lee's plan was the defense of that part of Long Island directly across the East River and particularly the imposing river bluffs near the tiny hamlet called Brooklyn, which was also spelled Breucklyn, Brucklyn, Broucklyn, Brookland, or Brookline, and amounted to no more than seven or eight houses and an old Dutch church that stood in the middle of the Jamaica Road, the main road inland from the Brooklyn ferry landing. — David McCullough

Politics is a word spelled N-O-W. — Alexis De Veaux

A moose tried to eat us, Hearth signed. "Excuse me?" I asked. "A moose?" Hearth grunted in exasperation. He spelled out: D-E-E-R. Same sign for both animals. "Oh, that's much better," I said. "A deer tried to eat you. — Rick Riordan

I have a prescription here for Obecalp for [patient's name], but I can't find it listed anywhere." He said, "Oh. That's placebo spelled backwards. — Dennis Miller

Born of necessity, the little fellow literally freed us of immediate worry. He provided the means for expanding our organization to its present dimensions and for extending the medium cartoon animation towards new entertainment levels. He spelled production liberation for us. — Walt Disney

The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS. — Winston S. Churchill

Krakatoa, spelled "Krakatau" in Indonesian, is a volcano in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. It is also the name of an island group made up of what is left of a larger island, consisting of three volcanic peaks that were destroyed by the catastrophic 1883 eruption. This explosive force was equivalent to 100,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs. It was the loudest sound ever heard in modern history and could be heard up to 3,000 miles away. At that time, the explosion caused huge tsunamis which killed more than 36,000 people and sent out shock waves that were recorded worldwide for almost a week. Years later in 1927, "Anak Krakatau" a new island mountain formed in its place and is again the location of volcanic activity. It is considered a part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire. — Hank Bracker

The trouble with the dictionary is that you have to know how a word is spelled before you can look it up to see how it is spelled. — Will Cuppy

The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.
To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, there is the aim.That is why we cry: education, knowledge! to learn to read is to kindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkles.
But whoever say light does not necessarily say joy.
There is suffering in light; an excess burns. Flames is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius — Victor Hugo

And that love letter you wrote," Rowan added helpfully. "Signing it with another chap's name." Emma Smallwood's eyes widened, and she turned to look at him, brows high. Henry felt his neck heat. His cravat seemed suddenly far too tight. "That's right," Phillip nodded as the memory returned to him. "Pugsworth, was it not?" Julian grinned at Miss Smallwood, clearly enjoying himself. "Did you really think this Pugsworth fellow in love with you?" Heaven help him, Henry hoped she wouldn't burst into disillusioned tears. Not all these years later. And not over Milton Pugsworth. But Miss Smallwood remained her imperturbable self. "Goodness no," she said. "For all his faults, Mr. Pugsworth spelled exceptionally well and had the neatest hand I ever saw. Your brother, on the other hand, never did learn to spell. And I recognized his sloppy scratchings the moment I saw them." Phillip gave her a long look of amused approval. "Bravo, Emma. — Julie Klassen

I hold that a man has as much right to spell a word as it is pronounced as he has to pronounce it the way it ain't spelled. — Josh Billings

Xylophone is spelled with an X. That's wrong. It should be a Z up front. Next time you spell xylophone, use a Z. If someone says, "That's wrong!", you say, "No, it ain't." If you think that's wrong, then you need to have your head Z-rayed. — Mitch Hedberg

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is 'naive' spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of 'bonsai.' — Christopher Hitchens

True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier - when it's spelled with a lower case letter. — Richard Hamming

... [T]he letters of the alphabet (two Cs, a large D; the combination of Y, S, and L) belong on an ophthalmologist's chart. For the Parisienne, luxury should never be spelled out. — Anne Berest

This is a huge foyer. She spun in a slow circle, taking in the high ceilings.
She'd said the word using its French pronunciation, foy-ay. Cletus said it that way. The rest of us said foy-er, like it's spelled, because we lived in the United States and weren't pretentious nut jobs. Not that I thought Sarah was a pretentious nut job or made such a judgment about all people based on their pronunciation of that single word.
Just Cletus. He said foy-ay and was most definitely a pretentious nut job. — Penny Reid

There are many things which can not be expressed by words.
There are many words which can not be spelled by human tongue.
There are many tongues which utter one single truth. — Toba Beta

There was a Sears, Roebuck catalogue painfully twisted and shellacked and tied with a red cord. The white card beneath it said, An inexpensive doorstop." ... There were catsup bottles made into bud vases, closthespins decorated with crepe paper butterflies for use as curtin hold-backers, crocheted bags for silverware, bouquets of crepe paper and velvet flowers, an enormous funeral set piece of white organdy gardenias and dark green oilcloth leaves with REST IN PEACE spelled out in white pipe cleaners, embroidered pictures, burned wood match boxes, and fancy pillows by the hundreds. The pillows embraced every sentiment from FRANKY AND JOHNNY WERE LOVERS in black beads on a cerise satin background to the Twenty-Third Psalm in white on black velvet. It was an impressive exhibit of what loneliness can do to people. — Betty McDonald

The official ideology [of Poland] is Marxism-Leninism, which no one openly admits to believing. For Marx expressed the German view, and Lenin the Russian one, and the meeting of these particular minds has always spelled Polish ruin. — Norman Davies

Everything about him spelled sincere, from the SIN on his lips, to the CERE in his eyes. — K.M. Golland

It's over for me, isn't it?" The old man glanced across the room mid-chew. "What do you mean?" "I'm not getting my body back." He shrugged. "Probably not." My head swam. It didn't matter that at some level I had suspected the truth; hearing the words spoken out loud felt like a kick in the teeth. "Why didn't you tell me before?" "You're a smart guy, Alexander, and we both know you had already figured it out. That's always the way with people - truth staring them in the face but unwilling to accept it." He ate another cookie quietly. "But," he added, "even if I had spelled it out you wouldn't have believed me. You weren't ready or willing to accept it yet. You'd just have gotten all worked up. — Linda Francis Lee

When a small child, I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong, happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away. — Anna Pavlova

Most people think that Christianity is spelled DO: they look at the Bible or the life of Christ, and they simply try hard to live like Jesus. Christianity is really spelled DONE: it is what Christ has done that enables us to live a life of obedience.30 — Darrin Patrick

Do you like Shakespeare?" he asks me. An odd segue.
I shake my head. "All I know about him is that he stole my name and spelled it wrong. — Tahereh Mafi

Love is 'evil' spelled backward
with an i instead of an o. — Avi

Help!!!! Why is Wednesday spelled like that?!!!! — Blake Shelton

When my children complain that I'm forgetful, I remind them that DAD is just ADD spelled sideways. — Harvey Stanbrough

He apologized when I was twelve. He was crying. I don't like to remember that. I like to remember the time he spelled and defined 'metamorphosis' when my mama was clean. He used her as an example, and he was chewing on the Popsicle stick left over from our lunch that day. When he smiled, his teeth were mad purple. — E.R. Frank

Her mother had once told her that there were men who kept secrets bottled up inside and that it spelled trouble for the women who loved them. Denise instinctively knew the truth of her mother's statement, yet it was hard to reconcile her words with the love she felt for Taylor McAden. — Nicholas Sparks

That's why I admired that kid who spelled it wrong on purpose so he could sit down. He knew he wasn't going to win, so why stand there for 3 hours.
First round. "Cat, K-A-T, I'm outta here." Then as he passed you, "Ha! I know there's 2 T's. — Brian Regan

[T]he accumulation of things not spelled out, not properly articulated, may result in neurosis. — Joseph Brodsky

One of the most popular illustrations we use in Love and Respect Conferences compares women and men to pink and blue. The audience responds immediately when I talk about how she sees through pink sunglasses and hears with pink hearing aids, while he sees through blue sunglasses and hears with blue hearing aids. In other words, women and men are very different. Yet, when blue blends with pink, it becomes purple, God's color - the color of royalty. The way for pink and blue to blend is spelled out in Ephesians 5:33: "[Every husband] must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband" (NIV). Living out Ephesians 5:33 is the key to blending together as one to reflect the very image of God. — Emerson Eggerichs

Plagiarism is not only wrong, it's spelled funny, okay. — Pepe The King Prawn

What is that thing? Vampires. Or, as it was spelled at the time, vampyres. Yes, we know: It is difficult to accept, a strain to wrap your head around. Go and take the time to do so. Watch some television programs, or read some books in which vampyres are heroic and charming and sparkle in the daylight, and then return here and brace yourself for a return to a time that vampyres were things that went bump in the night. — Peter David

It struck me that this was the second time in a couple of days that just yelling someone's name on the street could have spelled disaster. Then it struck me how wrong that was. To have to keep your life sectioned off like that. A signal that you'd fallen into a bad way to live. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

You know Alou's name spelled backwards is Uola? That sounds like a first name, Uola. — Harry Caray

Some argued that the youth of today were poorly educated and insufficiently industrious, but one of them had sought to validate his generation by spending considerable time and effort chiseling an obscene word in the concrete picnic table, and he had spelled it correctly. — Dean Koontz

To a child love is spelled T-I-M-E. — Zig Ziglar

I liked the name Frederick Bickel and I wish now I had left it as it was. After all, Theodore Bikel, whose name was similar though spelled differently, didn't change his, and he did all right. — Fredric March

True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person ... — Josh McDowell

Somehow he knew, based on very little experience, that this faux-casual shit spelled money. — Tom Wolfe

If you called the faery handbag by its right name, it would be something like 'orzipankianikcz,' which means the 'bag of skin where the world lives,' only Zofia never spelled that word the same way twice. She said you had to spell it a little differently each time. You never wanted to spell it exactly the right way, because that would be dangerous. — Kelly Link

I came up with myself. FAYZ. Spelled F-A-Y-Z. It stands for Fallout Alley Youth Zone. Fallout Alley, and nothing but kids." Howard laughed his mean laugh. "Don't worry, Astrid, it's just a FAYZ. Get it? Just a FAYZ. — Michael Grant

There is no fiercer enemy than a word. A word that can be written down in pages and punctuated by quotation marks and commas and spelled out in contracts and poems and sighs, in old whispers and song lyrics, in promises and vows. — Alice Hoffman

Everybody else seemed to know how to play this game. It was like they had their games all chosen for them. Those fucks seemed to have some cheat sheet built right into their brains that had all the rules and tips and clues to these games spelled out on them. — Andersen Prunty

Right,' Thomas said. 'Where are we headed?'
'To where they treat me like royalty,' I said.
'We're going to Burger King?'
I rubbed the heel of my hand against my forehead and spelled fratricide in a subvocal mutter, but I had to spell out temporary insanity and justifiable homicide, too, before I calmed down enough to speak politely. 'Just take a left and drive. Please.'
'Well,' Thomas said, grinning, 'since you said 'please'
- Thomas Raith & Harry Dresden, Small Favor, Jim Butcher — Jim Butcher

The psychobabble spelled out in magazines, the imaginary divans we would never wish to lie on ourselves, all they do is hold up mirrors in which not a single truth is revealed, because the truth is always trounced by the lie. Was Heinz a liar by saying nothing? Did he drink because he never stopped telling lies? — Cees Nooteboom

Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word. — Dorothy Parker

The mirror it was and life it spelled,
The road ahead, and the time past stepped,
All gathered in one; one to all paired,
My life is so different from all the world's threads.

My breaths are mine, my woes are too,
If my life were put through you,
You sure would unlikely pursue,
It should be left for me to gather,
I am its sculptor, mine would be the hammer. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

He might have mocked himself if he hadn't been tired of always mocking at what others took seriously. It was easier to mock, of course, but other people refrained, and not always because they lacked the imagination or sense of humor required to mock. Sometimes they refrained because they dared to long for something that was not easily grasped, something that might slip away if one did not pay it the proper respect - prayerful respect, the sort that moved one to remove one's hat by the side of a grave, or to bow one's head to soldiers marching off to war, even while damning the fat MPs that sent them to die. Life was not all for mockery. Nor was laughter. But it was harder to spot the prayerful moments when they called for laughter instead of tears. Tears spelled an end. Laughter could spell a beginning. — Meredith Duran

In 1850, August Salzmann photographed, near Jerusalem, the road to Beith-Lehem (as it was spelled at the time): nothing but stony ground, olive trees; but three tenses dizzy my consciousness: my present, the time of Jesus, and that of the photographer, all this under the instance of 'reality' - and no longer through the elaborations of the text, whether fictional or poetic, which itself is never credible down to the root. — Roland Barthes

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. — Victor Hugo

Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter Martha — Thomas Jefferson

Thus we come to the problem of determining what the poem is 'about.' Charles Altieri notes that '[a]n expression of the self can be one that is intended, the self's act, or one that is symptomatic, the act of a self not in control of what it manifests'(24) In 'Yankee Doodle,' and to a lesser extent in '$$$$$$," the interesting aspects of the poem are not 'the intended expression of the self.' The lack of explicitness is not suggestive in any positive sense because we feel that were things to be spelled out, this would weaken, not strengthen, the narrator's case by revealing the unacknowledged irrationality at the root of it. — Russell Harrison