You can't go back again

From "Some Kind of Explanation":

I'm suspect of the phrase, "You can't go back again". Are my feelings of unease justified?

Like so many things it depends on context. For example, at a family party my son reacted to exactly this phrase with rage when it formed my reply to his request to make a third trip to the dessert buffet. Likewise, if you were leaving your much-loved pet otter Fifibelle in the care of an avant-garde chef you were friends with at university because you were going away at short notice for a weekend in Minehead and nobody else was available, and then just as you were leaving the premises your eye was drawn to a blackboard bearing the legend “Chef’s Special Today: Mustelid Marinière” and then you heard a muffled squeal and suddenly felt an urge to return to Fifibelle “for one more cuddle”, but no sooner had you uttered this request than you were firmly propelled out of the restaurant door into the cold grey high street as a pitiless voice growled “You can’t go back again”, you would be right to feel unease.

 (One can often get useful effects out of the transformation "Other -> Otter" -- as in this bit from the relevant Wikipedia article:

Levinas talks of the Otter in terms of insomnia and wakefulness. It is an ecstasy, or exteriority toward the Otter that forever remains beyond any attempt at full capture, this otterness is interminable (or infinite); even in murdering an otter, the otterness remains, it has not been negated or controlled.)

See also.