“I saw Sophia Loren - the Italian woman with those wonderful cheekbones - in a movie the other day. She must have had 24 face-lifts, and she looks like an alien, as if she weren't from this world at all. Her Italian wrinkles would have been a thousand times more beautiful.” IfsWorldLooksHas BeensBeautifulFacesSawsWonderfulThis WorldThousandAliensLiftsItalianWrinklesSophiaCheekbones Author:Robert Bly
“Adolescents believe that the world belongs to the living, or more particularly to living people their age, so they feel within their rights if they destroy the canon or rewrite the fairy stories or act like Red Guards.” PeopleIfsWorldFeelsBelieveStoriesAgeRightsRedFairyCanonFairy Stories Author:Robert Bly
“An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead.” WorldElders Author:Robert Bly
“The dead made this world. We didn't make it. They made the poetry and the songs and the customs.” WorldMadeSongThis WorldCustoms Author:Robert Bly
“The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made.” WorldChildrenMadeAncestor Author:Robert Bly
“In some Mayan villages they even have a stage beyond the elder that they call the Echo Person. They say that when an Echo Person, whether a man or a woman, speaks, the words echo both in this world and in the other world. That's why they are called Echo People.” PeopleMenWorldPersonsSpeakStageThis WorldVillageEchoesEldersOther Worlds Author:Robert Bly
“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.” WorldChildrenLittlesIdeasSongLiteratureAgingTreatedInsult Author:Robert Bly
“The best poems take long journeys. I like poetry best that journeys--while remaining in the human scale--to the other world, which may be a place as easily overlooked as a bee's wing” WorldHumansMayLongJourneyWingsScalesPoetry IsBeesOther WorldsOverlookedLong JourneyBest Poem Book:Selected poems Source: Selected poems
