“[Cesar] Vallejo was at least metaphorically killed by fascist forces, in the sense that he wore himself out raising funds for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and got sick and died.” WarForceRepublicanSickDiedCivil WarFundFascistsSpanish Civil War Author:Robert Hass
“Poetry, when it takes sides, when it proposes solutions, isn't any smarter than anybody else.” SidesSolutionsSmarterPropose Author:Robert Hass
“[Osip] Mandelstam, who wasn't a political thinker, loved the idea of the city-state. One of the emblems in his poetry of the politics he imagined, over and against the universalizing politics of [Carl] Marx, was the medieval city of Novgorod, which had in its center a public well where the water was free to everyone. That became for him a figure of justice.” WellsIdeasStatesPoliticalWaterJusticeCitiesFiguresThinkerMedievalEmblems Author:Robert Hass
“As an artist, you have the job of working out whatever is given you to work out.” JobsArtistGivenWork Out Author:Robert Hass
“At some level, you have to be able to say, "This is my task." It's in small, local ways that you keep yourself alive and refresh ideas that are always going into dead abstraction.” WayIdeasAbleLevelsAliveTasksLocalsAbstraction Author:Robert Hass
“The thing I learned is that the work is getting done by people who dig in and work on a particular project: the people who spend 20 years sustaining a theater for black teenagers in Chicago; the people who reintroduce sticklebacks into Strawberry Creek in Berkeley and then wait patiently for the first egrets to show up.” PeopleYearsFirstsDoneShowsWaitingBlackParticularProjectsTheaterTeenagerChicagoSustainingStrawberriesCreeksBerkeley Author:Robert Hass
“It's the same with this idea of a literate public, and also of a democracy in which people have access to and really read the best books. It turns out that even when you create this kind of environment, maybe only 10 percent of the people want to read those books.” PeopleWantKindBookIdeasTurnsDemocracyEnvironmentPercentAccess Author:Robert Hass
“What Simone Weil said politics has meant all along, which means that you fight for 11 percent, 12 percent, 13 percent, that you avoid golden-age thinking and romantic melancholy and you just keep pushing.” ThinkingMeanSaidAgeFightingPercentGoldenPushingMelancholyGolden Age Author:Robert Hass
“I have always been amazed guys read my books and seem to enjoy them. Because I've raised boys, I like to think I can get inside a guy's mind. I try and make the boys talk like guys, sound like guys and react like guys.” ThinkingTryingMindI CanBookSeemsGuyEnjoySoundBoysRaisedAmazed Author:Lurlene McDaniel