Robert Hass Quotes

I almost always see what I didn't achieve, to a smaller or greater extent.

I think everyone has questions in their mind. Did they do their very best?

Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times.

I don't know what I was thinking, coming out here. There are no silver bullets in life, there's just the long, messy climb out of the pit you've dug youself.

I don't think I'm successful.

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

They say there's no second act in American lives. There's something there worth exploring. Giving up an idea of yourself, examining your failure, and seeing if that failure was the system's or yours. What does it mean to not turn out to be the person you want to be?

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'

I still feel as if I weren't a good enough mother. I didn't break any rules.

Sometimes I think I'm real predictable to myself and other times... you always wonder, Is this really what I wanted to do? Did I make a mistake? Should I be doing something else?

Some people go to bed at night thinking, 'That was a good day.' I am one of those who worries and asks, 'How did I screw up today?'

I often sit back and think, I wish I'd done that, and find out later that I already have.

I don't know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home.

I felt that some of my work was OK. If I could do it over, I'd do better.

I'm a grown woman. I can come up with plenty of things that I've done and said or didn't say or failed to do that remain with me as sources of embarrassment.

There are things that I am very proud of and there are things that you are not so proud of. But I think that applies to any musician.

My failures have made me look at myself in a way I've never wanted to before.

All I can say is I did the best I could, and I didn't do well enough on many occasions.

Honestly, I don't feel pressure to live up to anything I've done because I tend to not listen to my work once a year passes.

There are things that you think about in your life that you're proud of, some things that you're not proud of.

It's very rare I'll watch anything I'm a part of and think, 'I wouldn't change a thing.'

God knows I tried to make it earlier in life, but with all due respect to myself, nothing I ever did was any good.

I've criticized myself over the years.

I just thought to myself, 'What am I doing? Is this how I'm going to live my adult life, banging my head, especially with what I've learned and know about the dangers?'

Every man writes his manner. I just made poor decisions.