Billy Collins Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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I was in a military family, so by the time I was 13 I'd lived in six different places.
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Building codes are a good thing. People who throw rocks at inspectors are being naive. It's a lot like police officers; we want them around unless they stop us for a ticket. It's the same with inspectors.
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People love to be told what they know already.
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I like something where I can really use my imagination and be an active participant in the construction of the monster and usually that's in the world of the supernatural or the world of the fantastic, so that's why those kinds of stories about demons and the supernatural appeal to me or maybe I'm really interested in that subject.
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By patting somebody on the back, a boy or a girl, a professional dancer, male, female, it really makes people feel good and I know it certainly made me feel good.
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Consider well this fact: As long as the German people does not arise and use force directed by its own will, the assassination of the people will continue.
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Do I feel that white directors have to tell only white stories? No. Do I feel that black filmmakers should only tell stories about black people? No. If we say that, then that means Asian people cannot write about anybody but Asians. I don't think a woman should only write about women.
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The misperception about the South is that everybody is racist, and all black people are victims, that what was prevalent in the '60s is only relegated to the South.
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I avoid talking about the way I work. But in avoiding it I seem only to have encouraged people to focus their fantasies about me in an ever more fantastical way.
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Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
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I'm not confident around compliments or being celebrated, and I'm not comfortable with the thought of envy, which some people thrive on.
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There is so much great talent in the underground, and electronic music is finally getting the props that it's deserved for so long. I feel like now that everyone is discovering it and it's so fresh sounding to so many people. It doesn't get any more rock n' roll than playing EDC or the Staples Center. It's really madness.
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Specialists are people who always repeat the same mistakes.
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History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
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The audience has always been my best director.
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There are no 'political prisoners' as such in Bahrain. People are not arrested because they express their views, we only have criminals.
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As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.
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Computation, storage, and communications capacity are in the hands of practically every connected person - and these are the basic physical capital means necessary for producing information, knowledge and culture, in the hands of something like 600 million to a billion people around the planet.
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I was born and brought up in Liverpool with my clever little sister Jemma, who is 14 and wants to be a vet. My mum Jane is an administrator and my dad Peter is a taxi driver.
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I'm sometimes accused of being hostile to mutual funds. That's not fair, really. There is a place for them. Still, I am hostile to one thing, which is trying to use funds to time your way in and out of the market. That's a recipe for very bad results.
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I think coming from the Northwest is something that's born in your blood. On my mom's side, I'm, like, a sixth-generation Oregonian. My family came over in the covered wagons, 'Oregon Trail'-video-game style. Maybe the pioneer mentality runs in my blood because they were all pioneers.
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History should not be left to the historians. Rather, be like Churchill. Make history, and then write it.
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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.
