JESS LAIR QUOTE

[Garson O'Toole]

Fred Shapiro
> There was some discussion here about the earliest occurrence
> of a well-known quotation.  I verified it in the privately published
> first edition of the book in question:
>
> If you want something very, very badly, let it go free.  If it comes
> back to you, it's yours forever.  If it doesn't, it was never yours
> to begin with.
> Jess Lair, I Ain't Much Baby -- But I'm All I've Got [page 98,
> chapter 19] (1969)
> Note:  This was written by one of Lair's students as part of a class
> assignment.

Wonderful! Many thanks for your effort in verifying this popular
quotation in a very early edition. I was one of the people asking
about whether it existed based on a 1969 copyright notice adjacent to
the 1972 copyright in a later edition. Later editions included the
note: "This edition is an expansion of the original book under this
title." But the date and exact contents of the edition were uncertain.

LH wrote:
> And then there's the alternate version:  If you want something very,
> very badly, let it go free. If it comes back to you, it's yours forever.
> If it doesn't, hunt it down and kill it.

The original source of this variant may be unknown currently. It
existed by November 1983 on Usenet.
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ADS-L;1f043512.1106D

Garson

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