Robert Bly Quotes

Growing up is mostly the process of having to acknowledge the differences between your world and the whole world.

Back when I was an idealistic 18-year-old on my way to Chicago, I might have believed that being on the side of virtue would guarantee a good outcome. These many years later, I know better.

I'm still grappling with all the things most people resolve by the time they're 35. Maybe that's why I make music that is relevant to young people. I'm emotionally stuck at the age of 13.

I think that you should definitely listen to what people say, because everyone says it: High school is not the real world.

By the time you're 30, you know who you are inside. You learn to laugh at things you can't change; you learn to be yourself.

At 19, you know everything; by the time you're 40, you haven't got a clue.

Seeing my parents makes me realise that life is not a fairy tale.

I remember when I was 33 or 34, it was devastating because I realized I wasn't a kid anymore. The great thing about 40 was that I really felt like I had life experience and knew what I was doing now.

I think part of being an adult is leaving the fairytale behind.

By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons. We have found out that only a few things are really important. We have learned to take life seriously, but never ourselves.

By the time we've hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons.

When you're 22 or 23, you think the world revolves around you, and I felt that way for a long time. But I just turned 30, and I love it! You realize, 'Whoa, baby, you ain't all that.' And you're not! You're just a woman out there doing something she loves.

I was in a bar and I said to a friend, 'You know, we've become those 40-year-old guys we used to look at and say, 'Isn't it sad?'

It took me a long time to grow up.

I used to have this illusion that time and remote areas prepare you for the world. Our moms used to think that kind of thing. Well, it doesn't prepare you for the world at all!

I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile.

You spend your childhood wanting to get out from your house and wanting to get away and out into the real world, and then as adults, we start to learn that things are not what we thought they were.

Growing as a man, I had to go through some stuff first. I had to figure this thing out, find out who I was as a player.

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.

I want to be simple. I think that we try - and we think when we grow up - that we have the truth, because we experience and stuff. But that bullsh*t actually.

...You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ... Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.

I've calmed down, certainly, from the days of being 18, but I'm still having a good time.

I've gotten away with a lot in my life. The older you get the more you realize you're not getting away with it, it's taking its toll somewhere. So you try not to put yourself in those situations. Part of the mysterious process called growing up. Some people do that better than others.

I'd like to think that I'm getting slightly more mature as time goes on, but I don't know if my fiancee would necessarily agree.

I've experienced a lot for someone my age that a lot of people will be able to relate to.