Robert Hass Quotes

There is an extraordinary degree of amity among Washington poets. They hang together. You would be hard pressed to find that in Manhattan.

The group of writers I had grown up with in the '60s - Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, James Simmons, John Hewitt, Paul Muldoon - formed a very necessary and self-sustaining group.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

Tin House magazine is a port in the storm for people who love language. It is unfailingly excellent, and committed to publishing new voices in addition to delivering freaky-fresh work from established writers.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.

I've been slagged off completely by the art world and I don't know whether fancy being slagged off by the literary world as well. It's just too much.

I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.

Key West, unfortunately, is becoming rather literary and artistic.

My career means the world to me and it's something I'm very proud of.

Songs are kind of alive, I think; once you finish writing them, that doesn't mean that that's it for the song. It can have its own little life, I think.

Love means sharing the world with someone else.

Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the pleasures of the world.

You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.

And every true artist is the salvation of every other. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in.

I always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I couldn't figure out how you could be a novelist and make any money, which continues to be a problem for novelists the world over.

I would describe myself as a writer that hopes to take you into my world and help you feel a little safer.

Thus I live in the world rather as a Spectator of mankind, than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part of life.

Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.

There's no way to be prepared for a conversation with someone you don't know about something that means the world to you.

I want to burn the world because Alan is gone," he said. "I want to destroy everything I see. But you mean something to me. I will not destroy the world, because it has you in it.

Everything that is observed in the physical world has as its source that which is invisible. This means we must surrender to the Spirit and to the invisible part of ourselves. Then learning to manifest is really nothing more than learning to manifest another aspect of ourselves.

Bureaucrats are the only people in the world who can say absolutely nothing and mean it.

It is very frustrating not to be understood in this world. If you say one thing and keep being told that you mean something else, it can make you want to scream. But somewhere in the world there is a place for all of us, whether you are an electric form of decoration, peppermint-scented sweet, a source of timber, or a potato pancake.