you can't go home again en · X
Etymology
From the novel You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938), published posthumously in 1940. Wolfe took the title from a conversation with the writer Ella Winter, who remarked to Wolfe: "Don't you know you can't go home again?" Wolfe then asked Winter for permission to use the phrase as the title of his book.
Meanings
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Past times which are fondly remembered are irrecoverably in the past and cannot be relived.
The Americans have a phrase for it: you can't go home again. Once you leave, that is it. […] [H]is time has come and gone, as he confessed when he retired from Test cricket three years ago. And gone means gone.
2009 August 12, Michael Henderson, “The Ashes: Marcus Trescothick's health is more important than England winning”, in Telegraph (UK), retrieved 05 Nov 2018:As novelist Thomas Wolfe (1930s, not 1960s, version) declared in one of his book titles, You Can't Go Home Again—because home isn't there anymore.
2001 June 24, George J. Church, “Jobs in an Age of Insecurity”, in Time, archived from the original on 07 Jul 2022:The organizers of a surprisingly refreshing program called "Judson Dance Theater Reconstruction" know that you can't go home again. Instead, they have tried to re-create that home if ever so briefly—even if it was a home these same young organizers never knew.
1982 April 18, Anna Kisselgoff, “Dance: Judson Theater Remembered”, in New York Times, retrieved 05 Nov 2018:
Relateds
yesterday is gone · there's no point crying over spilt milk · you can't step in the same river twice · what's done is done · genie is out of the bottle · not in Kansas anymore · there is no there there
wikipedia: Thomas Wolfe · wikipedia: Ella Winter · wikipedia: You Can't Go Home Again