Center Gates

Famous quotes containing the words center and/or gates:

    “When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
    —Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    “Now, from the Gates of Hercules we flood
    Westward, westward till the barbarous brine
    Whelms us to the tired land where tasseling corn,
    Fat beans, grapes sweeter than muscadine
    Rot on the vine: in that land were we born.”
    —Allen Tate (1899–1979)