Hal Riley

“The Wild Man doesn’t come to full life through being “natural,” going with the flow, smoking weed, reading nothing, and being generally groovy. Ecstasy amounts to living within reach of the high voltage of the golden gifts. The ecstasy comes after thought, after discipline imposed on ourselves, after grief.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: The Bestselling Classic on Modern Masculinity And Self-Discovery

“Men are taught over and over when they are boys that a wound that hurts is shameful. A wound that stops you from continuing to play is a girlish wound. He who is truly a man keeps walking, dragging his guts behind.

Our story gives a teaching diametrically opposite. It says that where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be. Wherever the wound appears in our psyches, whether from alcoholic father, shaming mother, shaming father, abusing mother, whether it stems from isolation, disability, or disease, that is precisely the place for which we will give our major gift to the community.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men

“I know men who are healthier at fifty than they've ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.”
― Robert Bly

“We did not come to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees, Trees that start again, Drawing up from the great roots.”
― Robert Bly, Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems – Five Decades of Powerful American Poetry with Timeless Classics