"From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere"
About this Quote
Seuss turns geography into a punchline and a philosophy. “From there to here, and here to there” is a sing-song loop that refuses the comfort of a single destination; it’s motion without a map, a child-friendly way of saying the world doesn’t organize itself around your plans. The line’s charm is how quickly it smuggles that idea in. You start with directions, the most practical language we have, and Seuss flips it into a promiscuous everywhere-ness: “funny things are everywhere.” Not “can be,” not “might be,” but are. Certainty, delivered in bounce.
The subtext is a quiet permission slip. In Seuss’s universe, “funny” isn’t just jokes; it’s the weird, the misfit, the unexpectedly alive. The phrase teaches a mode of attention: if you move through the world expecting oddity, you’ll notice more of it, and you’ll be less threatened when it shows up. That matters in a mid-century American context that often prized conformity and clean narratives. Seuss, who had seen propaganda up close and later specialized in anti-didactic moral fables, repeatedly argued that imagination is not an escape hatch but a survival skill.
Form does the heavy lifting. The internal rhyme and mirroring clauses mimic walking in circles, then suddenly widen into a panoramic claim. It’s a toddler’s chant with a grown-up’s subversive edge: reality is crowded with the absurd, and your job isn’t to tidy it away, but to stay curious as you travel “there” and “here” and back again.
The subtext is a quiet permission slip. In Seuss’s universe, “funny” isn’t just jokes; it’s the weird, the misfit, the unexpectedly alive. The phrase teaches a mode of attention: if you move through the world expecting oddity, you’ll notice more of it, and you’ll be less threatened when it shows up. That matters in a mid-century American context that often prized conformity and clean narratives. Seuss, who had seen propaganda up close and later specialized in anti-didactic moral fables, repeatedly argued that imagination is not an escape hatch but a survival skill.
Form does the heavy lifting. The internal rhyme and mirroring clauses mimic walking in circles, then suddenly widen into a panoramic claim. It’s a toddler’s chant with a grown-up’s subversive edge: reality is crowded with the absurd, and your job isn’t to tidy it away, but to stay curious as you travel “there” and “here” and back again.
Quote Details
| Topic | Funny |
|---|---|
| Source | One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish — Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), Random House, 1960; rhyme includes the line "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere." |
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