AtomicQuote

Billy Collins Quote

If you look a word up in the dictionary and twenty minutes later you're still wandering around in the dictionary, you probably have the most basic equipment you need to be a poet.

Billy Collins

If you look a word up in the dictionary and twenty minutes later you're still wandering around in the dictionary, you probably have the most basic equipment you need to be a poet.

Tags: language, poetry

Related Quotes

It is still cheating, even if nobody comes.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It is still cheating, even if nobody comes.

Tags: a bit on the side, a play on words, abstruse, adultery, affair, ambiguity, ambiguous, ambivalent, amour, aphorism

If we were not impressed by job titles, suits, and jargon, we would demand that financial advisors show us their personal bank statements before they tell us what we could or should do with our own mo...

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If we were not impressed by job titles, suits, and jargon, we would demand that financial advisors show us their personal bank statements before they tell us what we could or should do with our own mo...

Tags: adage, adages, advice, advices, advisor, advisors, africa, african, aphorism, aphorisms

Looking but not seeing is the hearing but not understanding of the eye.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Looking but not seeing is the hearing but not understanding of the eye.

Tags: ambiguity, ambiguous, aphorism, aphorisms, aphorist, aphorists, comprehend, comprehension, ear, ears

Echo of the waves appears in the sky, their lights reflected in your eyes. I'm back in our world and happy again. The sound of your voice, compassionate embrace... The power in your touch, serenity of...

Oksana Rus

Echo of the waves appears in the sky, their lights reflected in your eyes. I'm back in our world and happy again. The sound of your voice, compassionate embrace... The power in your touch, serenity of...

Tags: arms, art, artist, bathing, beating, beneath, calm, caress, compassion, compassionate

Gankis lifted an arm to point at the distant shale cliffs. And in the face of it there were thousands of little holes, little what-you-call-'ems...Alcoves, Kennit supplied in an almost dreamy voice. I...

Robin Hobb

Gankis lifted an arm to point at the distant shale cliffs. And in the face of it there were thousands of little holes, little what-you-call-'ems...Alcoves, Kennit supplied in an almost dreamy voice. I...

Tags: answer, arm, blank, captain, cliff, funny, language, mother, name, point

Language and hearing are seated in the cerebral cortex, the folded gray matter that covers the first couple of millimeters of the outer brain like wrapping paper. When one experiences silence, absent...

Michael Finkel

Language and hearing are seated in the cerebral cortex, the folded gray matter that covers the first couple of millimeters of the outer brain like wrapping paper. When one experiences silence, absent...

Tags: activated, ancient, bedrock, brain, busy, cerebral cortex, deeper, experiences, gray matter, hearing

Light means knowledge in the Greek language it can also be translated as illumination, knowledge, insight, understanding and wisdom

Sunday Adelaja

Light means knowledge in the Greek language it can also be translated as illumination, knowledge, insight, understanding and wisdom

Tags: also, be, can, greek, illumination, insight, knowledge, language, light, means

Given Loughner's obsession with meaninglessness and language, maybe Foucault & Derrida deserve some fault here, too.

Walter Kirn

Given Loughner's obsession with meaninglessness and language, maybe Foucault & Derrida deserve some fault here, too.

Tags: 2011, 2011 tuscon shooting, blame game, jacques derrida, jared lee loughner, language, michel foucault, twitter

The language of God is color because, it's the only thing that everyone understands. And even if you're blind to the world you can still hear the color in everything.If you don't believe me, close you...

Anthony T.Hincks

The language of God is color because, it's the only thing that everyone understands. And even if you're blind to the world you can still hear the color in everything.If you don't believe me, close you...

Tags: blind, color, colour, feel, god, language, life, love, philosophy, wind

The face of self-pity was universally understood.

Vann Chow

The face of self-pity was universally understood.

Tags: asia, asian, depression, face, foreigner, japan, language, language barrier, language learning, living abroad
About Billy Collins

William James Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, retiring in 2016. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As of 2020, he is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.