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Billy Collins Quotes


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Quotes by Billy Collins

Showing 21-30 of 84 Quotes by Billy Collins

Often people, when they're confronted with a poem, it's like someone who keep saying 'what is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this?' And that dulls us to the other pleasures poetry offers.

~Billy Collins

Topics: Confronted Keep Like Meaning Meaning Of Offers Often Other People Pleasures Poem Poetry Saying Someone Us Who

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There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps.

~Billy Collins

Topics: Actually Could Difficult Difficulty Enjoy Forms If I Could Interesting Mean Penetrate Perhaps Poetry Some Want

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Humor, for me, is really a gate of departure. It's a way of enticing a reader into a poem so that less funny things can take place later. It really is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.

~Billy Collins

Topics: Departure End Funny Funny Things Gate Humor Itself Later Less Me Means Place Poem Reader Really Take Things Way

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I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.

~Billy Collins

Topics: After Bound Canadian Company Door Drafts Few Macintosh Made Notebooks Out Poem Send Then Type Up Write I Write

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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

Topics: Because Distraction Just Medium Perfect Poetry Primarily Radio Transmission Visual Voice

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Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't have time to deploy what I call their 'poetry deflector shields' that were installed in high school - there's little time to resist the poem.

~Billy Collins

Topics: Call Deploy Happens High High School Just Kind Listener Listeners Listening Little Little Time Poem Poetry Radio Resist Said School Time Were

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I'm trying to write poems that involve beginning at a known place, and ending up at a slightly different place. I'm trying to take a little journey from one place to another, and it's usually from a realistic place, to a place in the imagination.

~Billy Collins

Topics: Another Beginning Different Different Place Ending Imagination Involve Journey Known Little Place Poems Realistic Slightly Take Trying Up Write

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I think more influential than Emily Dickinson or Coleridge or Wordsworth on my imagination were Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies, and Loony Tunes cartoons.

~Billy Collins

Topics: Brothers Cartoons Emily Emily Dickinson Imagination Influential Melodies More Than Think Tunes Warner Were I Think

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

~Billy Collins

Topics: Billboards Boxes Buses Cereal Much Places Poetry Pretty Public

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If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out. In a poem, the pen is more like a flashlight, a Geiger counter, or one of those metal detectors that people walk around beaches with.

~Billy Collins

Topics: Agenda Around Beaches Counter Detector Letter Like Metal More Out Pen People Poem Record Resignation Simply Something Those Thought Using Walk Write You

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Poet

Born: March 22nd, 1941

Links

Find Billy Collins on Amazon

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