The world belongs primarily to the dead, and we only rent it from them for a little while. They created it, they wrote its literature and its songs, and they are deeply invested in how children are treated, because the children are the ones who will keep it going. The idea that each of us has the right to change everything is a deep insult to them.
Robert BlyEvery modern male has, lying at the bottom of his psyche, a large, primitive being covered with hair down to his feet. Making contact with this Wild Man is the step the Eighties male or the Nineties male has yet to take. That bucketing-out process has yet to begin in our contemporary culture.
Robert BlyAdolescents are in just as much trouble in Native America as they are in the white community.
Robert BlyYou have an utterly sincere glance when you look around after you are shipwrecked. You weep a long time on an island when you realize what's happened to you.
Robert BlyThere's a quality we could call vertical attention, which is an attention upward toward ancestors, spiritual states, angels, gods.
Robert Bly