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Quote by Robert Bly

“As a parent you have to do some renunciation.”

Quote by Robert Bly

Author

Robert Bly, born on December 23, 1926, is a renowned American poet. His poetry is known for its profound emotion and rich imagination, which has had a profound impact on contemporary poetry. more

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“Before I was a parent I was struck by Rilke, who, as you know, didn't go to his daughter's wedding because he was writing a poem that day. That was the ideal for artistic behavior in 1950. That's the way I wanted to live.”

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“I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore.”

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“Adulthood has something to do with not choosing any of the pure points of view, but living about half of what you really want to live.”

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“I got about half the time I wanted to write poetry. I got about half the time I needed to be a father. So there is something in adulthood that has to do with accepting the half of things, allowing a renunciation of the other half, accepting half a basket instead of a full basket.”

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“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.”

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“An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead.”

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“The dead made this world. We didn't make it. They made the poetry and the songs and the customs.”

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“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.”

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“When an elder turns to face the dead, that means he turns away from facing the future and his own retirement in Phoenix, let's say. He turns and finds himself facing the children.”

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“To me, the hope lies in adults forgetting about their retirement and turning toward the adolescents and helping pull the adolescents over that mysterious line drawn on the ground into adulthood. If we don't do that, the adolescents are going to stay exactly where they are for the next 30 or 40 years.”

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