“Yeats fussed about things falling apart and the center not being able to hold. What really happened was that the center ceased to exist altogether.”

—  John Barnes , book Mother of Storms

Source: Mother of Storms (1994), p. 54

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Yeats fussed about things falling apart and the center not being able to hold. What really happened was that the center…" by John Barnes?
John Barnes photo
John Barnes 38
American science fiction writer 1957

Related quotes

W.B. Yeats photo

“Things fall apart;
the center cannot hold…”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Laozi photo

“When the center does not hold, the circle falls apart.”

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…

This is a paraphrase of lines in "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats.
Misattributed

William Pfaff photo

“The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.”

William Pfaff (1928–2015) American journalist

Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 2, The Challenge of Europe, p. 63.

Richelle Mead photo

“I told you before, we’re the center,” she said. “And the center will hold.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: The Ruby Circle

Nora Ephron photo

“Plastic surgery is a way for people to buy themselves a few years before they have to truly confront what ageing is, which of course is not that your looks are falling apart, but that you are falling apart and some-day you will have fallen apart and ceased to exist.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Quoted in Christopher Goodwin, "Get real – ageing’s not all Helen Mirren," Times Online (UK) (4 March 2007)

Richelle Mead photo

“The center will hold. I wondered.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Dennis Kucinich photo

“The center has shifted in our politics. I'm really at the center. And all the other candidates are to the right of me.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Quoted in Alyssa Kim, "Kucinich Campaigns for Peace," http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/08/kucinich-campai.html (August 12, 2007). Kucinich was speaking on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News (August 12, 2007)

Don DeLillo photo

“I had centered myself, learning of the existence of an interior motion, a shift in the levels from isolation to solitude to wordlessness to immobility. When Opel occupied that center I became the thing that swirled.”

Don DeLillo book Great Jones Street

Source: Great Jones Street (1974), Ch. 11

Marie Howe photo

“Every poem holds the unspeakable inside it. The unsayable… The thing that you can't really say because it's too complicated. It's too complex for us. Every poem has that silence deep in the center of it.”

Marie Howe (1950) American writer
Alan Moore photo

“Stories are at the absolute center of human existence.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)
Context: Stories are at the absolute center of human existence. Sometimes to disastrous effect; if you think about how various ancient religious stories — that may have been intended at the time as no more than fables — have led to so many devastating wars up to and including the present day. Obviously there are some occasions when the fictions that we base our lives upon lead us into some terrifying territory.

Related topics