95 Quotes by Robert Bly

"The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends."

"When anyone seriously pursues an art - painting, poetry, sculpture, composing - over twenty or thirty years, the sustained discipline carries the artist down to the countryside of grief, and that descent, resisted so long proves invigorating. . . . As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression."

"Wherever there is water there is someone drowning."

"Be careful how quickly you give away your fire."

"Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend."

"A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed. It doesn’t move on its own. Sometimes it takes A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving."

"I have daughters and I have sons./When one of them lays a hand/On my shoulder, shining fish/Turn suddenly in the deep sea."

"Rumi is astounding, fertile, abundant, almost more an excitable library of poetry than a person."

"The lead either forges an instant connection with the reader, or the package fails."

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