Billy Collins Quotes

This is the middle. Things have had time to get complicated, messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore... This is the thick of things.So much is crowded into the middle—...too much to name, too much to...

You know the parlor trick.wrap your arms around your own bodyand from the back it looks likesomeone is embracing youher hands grasping your shirther fingernails teasing your neckfrom the front it is a...

You trip over a word while carryinga tray of vocabulary out to the poolonly to discover that broken glassis a good topic.

… I am the sound of rain on the roof.I also happen to be the shooting star,the evening paper blowing down an alley,and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.I am also the moon in the treesand t...

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...

We love, you know, children love the ingredients of poetry. And then they go into this tunnel that we call adolescence, and when they come out of it, they hate poetry.

But did you know that at your age Judy Garland was pulling down $ 150,000 a picture, Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory, and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room? No wait, I mean he h...

In the freakish pink and gray of dawn I tookhis death to bed with me and his death was my bedand in every corner of the room it hid from the light,and then it was the light of day and the next dayand...

Is there a better method of departure by night than this quiet bon voyage with an open book, the sole companion who has come to see you off, to wave you into the dark waters beyond language?

My favorite time to write is in the late afternoon,weekdays, particularly Wednesday. This is how I go about it:I take a fresh pot of tea into my study and close the door.Then I remove my clothes and l...

The fly lands on the swatter.The movie runs backwardsand catches fire in the projector.This species apes us wellby talking only about itself

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.

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.

Poetry can do a lot of things to people. I mean it can improve your imagination. It can take you to new places. It can give you this incredible form of verbal pleasure.

The life of Edward Estlin Cummings began with a childhood in Cambridge, Mass., that he described as happy, but he struggled in both his artistic and romantic exploits against the piousness of his fath...

I know my voice has a limited range of motion; I don't write dramatic monologues and pretend to be other people. But so far, my voice is broad enough to accommodate most of what I want to put into my...

ThemeIt's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwichand a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,I am consumed by the wish to add somethingto one of the ancient themes–youth dancing with...

This is what I think aboutwhen I shovel compostinto a wheelbarrow,and when I fill the long flower boxes,then press into rowsthe limp roots of red impatiens—the instant hand of Deathalways ready to bur...

Are we just avoiding our one true destiny when we do that, averting our glance from Philip Larkin who waits for us in an undertaker’s coat?

Perhaps the answer is simply one:one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,a small jazz combo working in the background.She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautifuleyes closed, and the...