Robert Bly

As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.

It is not our job to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves Like the trees, and be born again, Drawing up from the great roots.

One day while studying a [William Butler] Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life.

There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.

We can exchange sparks of light with another's eyes when we meet our lover on the dance floor at someone else's wedding. Our brains then go about warmed and fiery, and with one note they can explode into cello concertos and can imagine the giant blinking at the top of the bean stalk... His barbarous fingers scratching his head.

There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. Driving around, I will waste more time.

-Robert Bly