Robert Bly Quotes

I'm a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn't miss it.

I had wanted to be a sculptor throughout life, but to do so, I had to stop painting.

I'm pretty low-maintenance, but I like my time to myself, and once you have a child, you have to fight for it. I remember the first long bath I took [after Ptolemy's birth] was such a moment. Because a lot of the time you're in the shower, and if that baby cries, you've got to turn off the water and go!

My children have always existed at the deepest center of me, right there in the heart/hearth, but I struggled with the powerful demands of motherhood, chafing sometimes at the way they pulled me away from my separate life, not knowing how to balance them with my unwieldy need for solitude and creative expression.

I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.

Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.

I have a small child, so the idea of getting up at 3 a.m. to train before a day of shooting... I just don't have it in me, although I have so much respect for people who do.

I still feel conflicted because I don't always get to spend as much time with my daughter as I'd like, given my work.

I'm getting bigger roles, and I'm on location more, and I have a wife and family. I'd rather work less, and I've started to implement that. It was either that or my wife would break my heart.

Write for the love of your art. Someplace down the road, the money, the fame, they'll come, but by that time you won't be thinking in terms of money or fame.

Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered.

It's hard to have little children and a job and career at the same time. There is no time left for you as a woman.

You only have so much time in the day. At the end of the day, you don't want to see the thing that suffers be your family, or your kids, or your home life. It's hard to balance, but that's not anything unique to us and that's probably true for most busy, active, working parents. You know, it's just about finding time, it's about balance, it's about walking the line and making sure you're keeping your priorities in order.

Having children, you have so much more structure in your life. The open-endedness of being a single woman is gone, you know? It's sort of like, from 1 P.M. to 3 P.M. the kids are going to take a nap, so now I have time to sit down and write the lyrics, or once they're put to bed, I have a few hours to focus on those things. I need that. It's a very strange process, really - I can never predict what's going to happen. It always feels uncomfortable and awkward.

He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate.

I've never understood women who, because of their children, pose as victims and don't allow themselves any other activities.

I'm a highly, highly, highly creative human being. I write music all the time. I write scripts constantly. I run my own production company. I'm also a very determined businesswoman. I've a town to deal with. I've got a lot of things to do and I don't have time to be classified as difficult, and I don't have time to care.

If you love writing or making music or blogging or any sort of performing art, then do it. Do it with everything you've got. Just don't plan on using it as a shortcut to making a living.

Writing-and this is the big secret-wants to be written. Writing loves a writer the way God loves a true devotee. Writing will fill your heart if you let it. It will fill your pages and help to fill your life.

Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

Writing poetry is like always being in love. What masochism! What luxury!

For a while, I just thought that I wanted to be an illustrator because that's all I wanted to do. I also did some sculpting. It was always very artsy and very feminine, everything that I did.

Things change when you have children; your priorities change.

As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make because of the fixed and tight production schedule.