Quotes from Robert Hass

As poet laureate, I was asked to be a spokesman for literature.

I think that my responsibility to my art is to try to get it right or to push the boundaries of what I'm able to do in any way.

I think that what art can do is refresh our sense of justice, wake us up to what we've taken for granted in the political realm, as in the other realms.

The market doesn't make communities. Markets make networks of self-interested individuals, and they work as long as there's more than enough to go around.

As an artist, you have the job of working out whatever is given you to work out.

The Vietnam War and the Iraq war, in different ways, both made me feel like I could not not address them. I'm very doubtful about the usefulness of poetry to do that.

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