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The Booklovers Lyrics
"this book deals with epiphenomenalism which has to do with consciousness as a mere accessory of physiological processes whose presence or absence... makes no difference... whatever are you doing?"
Aphra Behn: hello
Cervantes: donkey
Daniel Defoe: to christen the day!
Samuel Richardson: hello
Henry Fielding: tittle-tattle tittle-tattle...
Lawrence Sterne: hello
Mary Wollstonecraft: vindicated!
Jane Austen: here I am!
Sir Walter Scott: we’re all doomed!
Leo Tolstoy: yes!
Honoré de Balzac: oui...
Edgar Allen Poe: aaaarrrggghhhh!
Charlotte Brontë: hello...
Emily Brontë: hello...
Anne Brontë: hellooo..?
Nikolai Gogol: vas chi
Gustav Flaubert: oui
William makepeace Thackeray: call me 'William makepeace Thackeray’
Nathaniel Hawthorne: the letter ’a’
Herman Melville: ahoy there!
Charles Dickens: london is so beautiful this time of year...
Anthony Trollope: good-good-good-good evening!
Fyodor Dostoevsky: here come the sleepers...
Mark Twain: I can’t even spell ’mississippi’!
George Eliot: george reads german
Emile Zola: j’accuse
Henry James: howdy miss wharton!
Thomas Hardy: ooo-arrr!
Joseph Conrad: I’m a bloody boring writer...
Katherine Mansfield: [cough cough]
Edith wharton: well hellomr james!
DH Lawrence: never heard of it
EM Forster: never heard of it!
Happy the man and happy he alone who in all honesty can call today his own;
He who has life and strength enough to say ’yesterday’s dead & gone - I want to live today’
James Joyce: hello there!
Virginia Woolf: I’m losing my mind!
Marcel Proust: je me’en souviens plus
F scott Fitzgerald: baa bababa baa
Ernest Hemingway: I forgot the....
Hermann Hesse: oh es ist alle so häßlich
Evelyn Waugh: whoooaarr!
William faulkner: tu connait william faulkner?
Anaïs Nin: the strand of pearls
Ford Maddox Ford: any colours long as it’s black!
Jean-Paul Sartre: let’s go to the dome simone!
Simone de Beauvoir: c’est exact present
Albert Camus: the beach... the beach
Franz Kafka: what do you want from me?!
Thomas Mann: mam
Graham Greene: call me 'pinky' lovely
Jack Kerouac: me car’s broken down...
William S Burroughs: wowwww!
Happy the man and happy he alone who in all honesty can call today his own;
He who has life and strength enough to say ’yesterday’s dead & gone - I want to live today’
Kingsley Amis: [cough]
Doris Lessing: I hate men!
Vladimir Nabokov: hello little girl...
William Golding: achtung busby!
JG Ballard: instrument binnacle
Richard Brautigan: how are you doing?
Milan Kundera: I don’t do interviews
Ivy Compton burnett: hello...
Paul Theroux: have a nice day!
Günter Grass: I’ve found snails!
Gore Vidal: oh it makes me mad!
John Updike: run rabbitrun rabbitrunrunrun...
Kazuro Ishiguro: ah soold chap!
Malcolm Bradbury: stroke John Steinbeck stroke JD Salinger
Iain Banks: too orangey for crows!
As Byatt: nine tenths of the lawyou know...
Martin Amis: [burp]
Brett Easton ellis: aaaaarrrggghhh!
Umberto Eco: I don’t understand this either...
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: mi casa es su casa
Roddy Doyle: ha ha ha!
Salman Rushdie: names will live forever...
Cervantes: donkey
Daniel Defoe: to christen the day!
Samuel Richardson: hello
Henry Fielding: tittle-tattle tittle-tattle...
Lawrence Sterne: hello
Mary Wollstonecraft: vindicated!
Jane Austen: here I am!
Sir Walter Scott: we’re all doomed!
Leo Tolstoy: yes!
Honoré de Balzac: oui...
Edgar Allen Poe: aaaarrrggghhhh!
Charlotte Brontë: hello...
Emily Brontë: hello...
Anne Brontë: hellooo..?
Nikolai Gogol: vas chi
Gustav Flaubert: oui
William makepeace Thackeray: call me 'William makepeace Thackeray’
Nathaniel Hawthorne: the letter ’a’
Herman Melville: ahoy there!
Charles Dickens: london is so beautiful this time of year...
Anthony Trollope: good-good-good-good evening!
Fyodor Dostoevsky: here come the sleepers...
Mark Twain: I can’t even spell ’mississippi’!
George Eliot: george reads german
Emile Zola: j’accuse
Henry James: howdy miss wharton!
Thomas Hardy: ooo-arrr!
Joseph Conrad: I’m a bloody boring writer...
Katherine Mansfield: [cough cough]
Edith wharton: well hellomr james!
DH Lawrence: never heard of it
EM Forster: never heard of it!
He who has life and strength enough to say ’yesterday’s dead & gone - I want to live today’
Virginia Woolf: I’m losing my mind!
Marcel Proust: je me’en souviens plus
F scott Fitzgerald: baa bababa baa
Ernest Hemingway: I forgot the....
Hermann Hesse: oh es ist alle so häßlich
Evelyn Waugh: whoooaarr!
William faulkner: tu connait william faulkner?
Anaïs Nin: the strand of pearls
Ford Maddox Ford: any colours long as it’s black!
Jean-Paul Sartre: let’s go to the dome simone!
Simone de Beauvoir: c’est exact present
Albert Camus: the beach... the beach
Franz Kafka: what do you want from me?!
Thomas Mann: mam
Graham Greene: call me 'pinky' lovely
Jack Kerouac: me car’s broken down...
William S Burroughs: wowwww!
He who has life and strength enough to say ’yesterday’s dead & gone - I want to live today’
Doris Lessing: I hate men!
Vladimir Nabokov: hello little girl...
William Golding: achtung busby!
JG Ballard: instrument binnacle
Richard Brautigan: how are you doing?
Milan Kundera: I don’t do interviews
Ivy Compton burnett: hello...
Paul Theroux: have a nice day!
Günter Grass: I’ve found snails!
Gore Vidal: oh it makes me mad!
John Updike: run rabbitrun rabbitrunrunrun...
Kazuro Ishiguro: ah soold chap!
Malcolm Bradbury: stroke John Steinbeck stroke JD Salinger
Iain Banks: too orangey for crows!
As Byatt: nine tenths of the lawyou know...
Martin Amis: [burp]
Brett Easton ellis: aaaaarrrggghhh!
Umberto Eco: I don’t understand this either...
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: mi casa es su casa
Roddy Doyle: ha ha ha!
Salman Rushdie: names will live forever...
Song Info
Submitted by
ilse On Feb 13, 2006
More The Divine Comedy

Songs Of Love

National Express

The Frog Princess

The Complete Banker

Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont

"Happy the man" verse is inspired by John Dryden's English translation of one of Horace's odes (Imitation of Horace, book III, ode 29, vv. 65-72).
The Dryden's original text is also quoted in "Ode to the Man", the last mini-track of the album:
Happy the man, and happy he alone He, who can call today his own He who, secure within, can say Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today

I can picture Neil in his Dad's library, looking at names of authors and writing them down. "Aphra Benn, Cervantes..."

The song is about two lovers discussing their favourites books and authors, during a day out at the seaside.
Possibly the greatest work of The Divine Comedy.