Billy Collins Quotes: top 73 famous quotes about Billy Collins

Billy Collins Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Billy Collins quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

I'm easily frightened, and I've also come to realize that old Catholic guilt or remorse is easily stimulated. — Billy Collins

I think 'accessible' just means that the reader can walk into the poem without difficulty. The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. — Billy Collins

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow. — Billy Collins

I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does. — Billy Collins

And I should mention the light
which falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches ... — Billy Collins

Very few people have actually read Freud, but everyone seems prepared to talk about him in that Woody Allen way. To read Freud is not as much fun. — Billy Collins

Form is any aspect of a poem that encourages it to stay whole and not drift off into chaos. — Billy Collins

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane. — Billy Collins

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine. — Billy Collins

The dog (the poet) is on top of a locomotive," ... "He's got a box full of track, and he's frenetically laying down track in front of the train. — Billy Collins

One burst after another as my wife turned in her sleep. I was a single monkey trying to type the opening lines of my Hamlet, — Billy Collins

I first came across 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' in college, with other anthologized poems by Yeats. — Billy Collins

Bugs Bunny is my muse. — Billy Collins

High School is the place where poetry goes to die. — Billy Collins

When you put a book together and arrange it, there's a lot of anxiety and turmoil about what order the poems should be in. — Billy Collins

... balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found. — Billy Collins

I'm going through life's cycles at an alarmingly fast pace, but my persona has a Peter Pan quality: he doesn't age. — Billy Collins

Death is what makes life fun. — Billy Collins

I was a pretty happy kid, I had to fake it. I had to get into this miserable character before I wrote poems. — Billy Collins

I was able to read poets that were - allowed me to be humorous without being silly. — Billy Collins

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper. — Billy Collins

It's an important social duty to spread the word of English to people whose livelihoods depend on knowing the language. — Billy Collins

I could look at you forever and never see the two of us together — Billy Collins

Write the poem only you can write. — Billy Collins

I'm not a claustrophobe, but you don't need to be to feel claustrophobic inside an MRI. It's like being buried alive. — Billy Collins

Until recently, I thought 'occasional poetry' meant that you wrote only occasionally. — Billy Collins

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried. — Billy Collins

My persona is less miserable than a lot of contemporary poetry speakers are. — Billy Collins

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart. — Billy Collins

I'm an only child, and I can take all the attention you manage to pile on me. — Billy Collins

After all, is a gentleman's library of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves anything more than a vanity? — Billy Collins

It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead. — Billy Collins

This love for everyday things,
part natural from the wide eye of Infancy,
part a literary calculation — Billy Collins

I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness. — Billy Collins

All I wanted was to be a pea of being inside the green pod of time. — Billy Collins

The trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry ... — Billy Collins

Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye. — Billy Collins

There's something very authentic about humor, when you think about it. Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can't pretend to be funny. — Billy Collins

I stared up at the ebbing quarter moon and the stars scattered like a handful of salt across the faraway sky ... — Billy Collins

There's a lot of unconscious activity that goes on I think in the composition of a poem. — Billy Collins

One of these days I'm-a make me a book out of you. — Billy Collins

I think the pleasure of form is that you have a companion with you besides all the poetry you have ever read. — Billy Collins

I find that my reading, particularly nonfiction, can inspire a poem as well as anything else. — Billy Collins

I don't write for an auditorium full of people. I don't write for the microphone; I write for the page. — Billy Collins

I'll listen to anything authentic whether it's bluegrass or gospel or blues. — Billy Collins

No one here likes a wet dog. — Billy Collins

You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and - somehow - the wine. — Billy Collins

I learned snails don't have ears. They live in silence. They go slowly. Slowly, slowly in silence. — Billy Collins

When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading. — Billy Collins

I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes. — Billy Collins

The girl who signed her papers in lipstick
leans against the drugstore, smoking,
brushing her hair like a machine — Billy Collins

You trip over a word while carrying
a tray of vocabulary out to the pool
only to discover that broken glass
is a good topic. — Billy Collins

BEFORE THERE WAS BILLY COLLINS & TED KOOSER, THERE WAS EDGAR GUEST — Ron Silliman

I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word 'accessible.' — Billy Collins

I thought originally when I was in school and I wanted to be a poet, I knew that poets seemed to be miserable. — Billy Collins

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you. — Billy Collins

I'm a nearly uncontrollable Geoff Dyer fan, who I think is one of the most comically brilliant writers today. — Billy Collins

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest. — Billy Collins

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air — Billy Collins

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God. — Billy Collins

Just pour the tea, just look into the eye of the flower, just sing the song - one thing at a time and — Billy Collins

Besides the aesthetics, besides teaching an appreciation of T.S. Eliot, a basic need is fulfilled when you teach English at CUNY. — Billy Collins

I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil. — Billy Collins

When I write, I'm not trying to be funny. It's the way I look at the world. — Billy Collins

The poets who have written the best poems about war seem to be the poets whose countries have experienced an invasion or vicious dictatorships. — Billy Collins

It is as if one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the Southern Hemisphere of the brain. — Billy Collins

Radio is such a perfect medium for the transmission of poetry, primarily because there just is the voice, there's no visual distraction. — Billy Collins

Pleasure, of course, is a slippery word ... Our pleasures ultimately belong to us, not to the pleasure's source. — Billy Collins

Poems are perfect for something to listen to while you're walking around because they don't take very long. — Billy Collins

It's a good thing to get poetry off the shelves and more into public life. — Billy Collins

Would pass in the street, mostly people whose existence I did not believe in, — Billy Collins

The public is probably more suspicious of poets than women, and maybe for good reason. — Billy Collins

Discovering Samuel Beckett in college was a big deal for me. I realized you could be very funny and very dark at the same time. — Billy Collins