Billy Collins Quotes

I find that my reading, particularly nonfiction, can inspire a poem as well as anything else.

Billy Collins

• Reading

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Quotes to Explore

• I saw a picture of Elvis in blue lame, and thought that if I could recreate that suit and walk down the King's Road in it, someone might pick me up and take me off on a crazy adventure.

  

  Malcolm Mclaren
  • Up
  • Crazy
  • Road

• It is crucial that we develop real awareness of ourselves as citizens of Earth, linked by mutual and indissoluble bonds. When we clearly recognize this reality and ground ourselves in it, we are compelled to take a strict accounting of our way of life.

  

  Daisaku Ikeda
  • Life
  • Real
  • Reality

• There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says, 'Don't worry - everything will be just fine,' and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.

  

  Ramez Naam
  • Action
  • Worry
  • Optimism

• I own a Hangman jumper, which looks like a scarf, but that's what it's called. It cost a fortune, but it was worth it.

  

  Kate Moss
  • Own
  • Fortune
  • Scarf

• We have been given a role to play. We have been asked to provide, to give lectures on the role of Islamic development and the way we do it here, so the people who are Muslims there would understand what the role of Islam is.

  

  Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
  • People
  • Development
  • Islamic

• I don't have any message in the music. Music will be fine as long as you take care of yourself.

  

  Mahavishnu John McLaughlin
  • Music
  • Long
  • Care

• It's healthy to have interests besides books.

  

  Patrick deWitt
  • Books
  • Healthy
  • Besides

• I have never found out that there was in my family an artist or anyone interested in the arts or sciences, and I have never been sufficiently interested in my 'family tree' to bother. My father and mother had come to America on one of those great waves of immigration that followed persecution and pogroms in Czarist Russia and Poland.

  

  Jacob Epstein
  • Great
  • Family
  • America

• I had a moment where I left journalism, and I started getting interested in this issue and writing about it, where I felt there was a right side and a wrong side around a lot of these issues relating to education.

  

  Brown Campbell
  • Writing
  • Education
  • Moment

• I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.

  

  Barry Hannah
  • Life
  • Work
  • Live

• I sing to Jesus for Jesus now. This gives me pure joy... worship!

  

  Vanity
  • Me
  • Joy
  • Jesus

• I'm the little dog who goes the wrong way - under the hoop.

  

  Jack Levine
  • Way
  • Dog
  • Wrong

• Rock and Roll has no beginning and no end for it is the very pulse of life itself.

  

  Larry Williams
  • Life
  • Rock
  • Beginning

• A lasting architecture has to have roots.

  

  I. M. Pei
  • Architecture
  • Roots
  • Lasting

• The older you get, the more comfortable you become with yourself, and you accept what you have physically.

  

  Victoria Beckham Spice Girls
  • You
  • Yourself
  • Accept

• As a business person, I want the world to share the prosperity together.

  

  Jack Ma
  • World
  • Business
  • Together

• The whole borrowing clothes thing is very unnatural for me. I don't feel comfortable with that. If you like something, I'd just give it to you rather than sharing it.

  

  Zana Marjanovic
  • Me
  • Clothes
  • Sharing

• I have seen life from the top down and the bottom up. I know how it looks both ways. And I know there is wisdom and that there is hope.

  

  L. Ron Hubbard
  • Life
  • Up
  • Hope

• When I grew up reading comics, the part in the Marvel universe that was so exciting was that you could have a battle going on in 'Iron Man' and then, suddenly, Thor would fly overhead, and you realized, 'Oh, it's all one place.'

  

  Jeph Loeb
  • Up
  • Reading
  • Universe

• Reading aloud to other people is wonderful - if you have people who will suffer it.

  

  Mary H.K. Choi
  • People
  • Reading

• There is always going to be a little bit of me in each character.

  

  Abraham Benrubi
  • Character
  • Me
  • Always

• Some other things I don't miss: the media and the pressure of just being asked to do, and being asked questions every day.

  

  Pedro Martinez

• To us, 'The Amazing Race' takes the whole world and turns it into a giant game. What could be better?

  

  Burnie Burns
  • World
  • Game
  • Amazing

• I find that my reading, particularly nonfiction, can inspire a poem as well as anything else.

  

  Billy Collins
  • Reading