Robert Hass

“Ideas of the good are normative and are also properties of the world.”

“Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.”

“The problem is how to love farms and cities without loving the version of capitalism that created them.”

“The rhythm of a piece of prose is not explained by the beat, but by the breathing.”

“A word is elegy to what it signifies.”

“The desire to make something beautiful is continuously renewed in the mind of the maker.”

“Memory is a kind of imagination.”

“There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.”

“Take the time to write. You can do it from home. You can be a writer in the corner of a room.”

“Poetry is a way of living... a human way of getting through life.”

“It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.”

“All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking.”

“What I have is a malevolent curiosity. I want to know what's going to happen.”