Billy Collins Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
-
I get tired of comedies where there are a bunch of funny guys and a beautiful woman who doesn't do anything funny. And I don't like books where there's a rough-and-tumble boy and a really clever, snotty girl. That's just not my experience with teenagers.
-
I don't have the looks to compete at a bar, and I'm not that funny. So the last thing I want is to be in a situation where that's what I'm competing on. I'd rather be on OkCupid or Match, where I can write a 300-word essay about myself that's really good.
-
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
-
Most things I get hired on, I get hired because I improvise something funny, or they just think I look weird.
-
Whenever I'm in the U.K., people say I have an American accent. Which is, obviously, funny.
-
When you're a woman, you have to work harder to get a laugh... I follow so many hilarious women on Twitter. It's a daily reminder that women get to be funny.
-
A mate of mine told me recently, 'It's the first time I've seen you work, Worthington.' I thought that was quite funny, but he was right.
-
I did accents and funny voices for the family when I was growing up.
-
My voice is distinctive: there's a rhythm to it, and also, it's funny. I was just blessed with a funny-sounding voice.
-
Literary dementia seems dated now, but there was a time when a month in the funny farm was as de rigueur for budding writers as an M.F.A. is now. To be sent away was a badge of honor; to undergo electroshock, a glorious martyrdom.
-
I have an unfortunate personality.
-
It's so funny: at 'SNL,' Bill Hader always kind of treated me like his little sister and would kind of, like, lovingly bully me.
-
I think Secretary's funny, it is about sex, and there's a lot of sex in it, sex is the key, but you're talking about a lot of other complicated things.
-
Being a humorist is not a voluntary thing. You can tell this because in a situation where saying a funny thing will cause a lot of trouble, a humorist will still say the funny thing. No matter how inappropriate.
-
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
-
Flirting is funny. And it's awkward and weird.
-
I got tired of books where the boy is a bit thick and the girl's very clever. Why does it have to such an opposition? Why can't they be like the girls and boys that I know personally, who are equally funny and equally cross? Who get things equally wrong and are equally brave? And make the same mistakes?
-
I'm doin' something different. I mean, I talk a little bit about race and interracial dating, but it's not the heart of my act. I just try to do what I think is funny; there's no huge message or through line.
-
I've never claimed that this is investment art. When we first started out, all the art colleges and universities across the country would sort of badmouth what we were doing. It's funny that a lot of them now are sending us letters saying, 'We may not totally agree with the way you paint, but we appreciate what you're doing, because you're sending literally thousands of people into art colleges.
-
You have to build a culture of philanthropy. In a country like India, we need to be sensitive and caring about the poorer, more disadvantaged section of our country.
-
A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.
-
We have witnessed the terrible increases in the incidence of alcoholism, the advent of drug dependency, the protests, marches, strikes and human alienation.
-
I didn't listen to executives.
-
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.
