Robert Hass Quotes

I have a lot of books I want to write.

I probably could be a world-class screenwriter by now if I had spent the kind of work I devote on Comedy Death-Ray to that. But I do okay, in that regard. I mean, my stuff gets bought, so it's all right.

I write a good amount. I've been gathering up a backlog of stuff and maybe I'll do something with it someday, but I don't want to talk about it just yet because that would jinx it.

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

The idea of being a novelist is really romantic, but it's kind of the same as being president of the United States - it's not gonna happen.

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

I always thought it'd be fun to write something, but it never was an ambition of mine, per se.

I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing.

I looked back at the years since I'd left college and thought of the list of things I'd have liked to do. I'd always wanted to write a book - not a small undertaking. I never felt I had the time or creative energy to spare in order to write one as well as I wanted.

Like lots of people who say, 'I'm going to write a novel,' it's actually more comfortable to think I could write a novel than to discover that you can't.

I don't know if I want to be a writer.

I didn't want to look back in 10 or 20 years and say, 'Yes, I always wanted to write that piano sonata or that novel, but I never had time.'

'Some day,' I said, 'I will be an author.'

I have decided that maybe I want to write when I grow up. I just don't know what I would write.

I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.

For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write - like myself - college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.

The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.

Writers will be judged by what they write.

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'

I'd love to be able to write again, but I'm so repetitive. And it was all about fear. Never positive. Just indulgent about my sadness.

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

A writer should always feel like he's in over his head

What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write... Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I was in love with the image of being a writer. Whatever. It had been a really bad idea. Because I couldn't write, at least not by the bluntly and frequently expressed standards of anyone in a position to offer any encouragement and feedback.