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

Robert Bly

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Robert Bly
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: December 23
Linguist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Madison
Minnesota
Robert Bly
Robert Elwood Bly
Belongs
Dead
Someone
World
Elder
Elders
Understands

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I want nothing from You but to see You.
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People tend to take stories literally these days.
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One could say the higher the spirit goes, the more deeply the soul sinks down into the waters of melancholy and tragedy. Drowning in that water is as sweet as rising.
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The door to the soul is unlocked you do not need to please the doorkeeper, the door in front of you is yours, intended for you, and the doorkeeper obeys when spoken to.
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The best presenters have conversations with their audiences.
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Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.
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What I am trying to do is bring people into grief in relation to the society we have.
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What you feel in Japanese poetry is always entirely longing.
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A person who discreetly farts in an elevator is not a divine being, and a man needs to know this.
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Don't go outside your house to see flowers. My friend, don't bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. That will do for a place to sit. Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it, before gardens and after gardens.
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All of Japan once a year will get up on their rooftops, because that's the night that the shepherd boy from one side of the Milky Way gets to meet the weaver girl on the other side of the Milky Way. They all get up on their roofs and watch that night. So they long for 365 days and then on the 365th night, they see the result of that longing.
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Be careful how quickly you give away your fire.
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If a man, cautious, hides his limp, Somebody has to limp it! Things do it the surroundings limp. House walls get scars, the car breaks down matter, in drudgery, takes it up.
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Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend.
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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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I have risen to a body not yet born, existing like a light around a body through which the body moves like a sliding moon.
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When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, not his teaching.
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If you want to know what it will be like when we are more deeply into the horizontal, simply go to one of the Indian casinos. The Native Americans, who stand for vertical thinking more than anyone else in our culture, have been setting up totally flat casinos for honkies.
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It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down.
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