Billy Collins Quotes

I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue. If it does, I can feel a sense of momentum - the poem finds a reason for continuing.

Billy Collins

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Divorce was very sad, obviously, but now I've gotten over it.

  

  Natalie Imbruglia
  • Sad
  • Now
  • Divorce

• Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.

  

  Patrick Macnee
  • World
  • Friends
  • War

• My greatest regret is selling my company.

  

  Vidal Sassoon
  • Regret
  • Company
  • Greatest

• For me, and this may not be everybody, but because I do love country music so much, there's such a feeling of home in Nashville, especially because it's such a small town. You bring up one song, everybody knows who wrote it, everybody knows their mother and what their cell number is, and all of the stories.

  

  Garrett Hedlund
  • Mother
  • Feeling
  • Stories

• I'm trying to sell every audience something; that something is me.

  

  Eddy Arnold
  • Trying
  • Me
  • Audience

• I have always wanted to work with Lingusamy, as he is a master of commercial cinema. I have always admired his etching of female characters.

  

  Samantha Ruth Prabhu
  • Work
  • Always
  • Cinema

• I spent a lot of time between bars like this.

  

  Tammy Duckworth
  • Time
  • Like
  • Bars

• I like to swim. It's good for the body and it helps clear my head.

  

  Carly Rae Jepsen
  • Good
  • Like
  • Body

• Try to find someone with a sense of humor. That's an important thing to have because when you get into an argument, one of the best ways to diffuse it is to be funny. You don't want to hide away from a point, because some points are serious, but you'd rather have a discussion that was a discussion, rather than an argument.

  

  Ed Sheeran
  • Important
  • Funny
  • Best

• Our deals and performance speak for themselves. And whoever doesn't feel comfortable investing with us will not.

  

  Dan Gertler
  • Feel
  • Speak
  • Performance

• As you get older, you get different, and I'm a mushier, softer person as I get older.

  

  Eddie Murphy
  • Different
  • You
  • Person

• When I was blonde I was perceived as an innocent and sweet young girl.

  

  Samantha Mathis
  • Girl
  • Sweet
  • Young

• What really matters is what you do with what you have.

  

  H. G. Wells
  • You
  • Really
  • Matters

• Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.

  

  Adam Grant
  • May
  • Successful
  • Prove

• I don't know why people feel that I am snooty. I am not a person who has ever given an interview on image building. I have never been that person, as I am very confident of what I do. People do PR, but I get completely foxed. I don't know how to do it. I stay away from the limelight, as I think my work should speak on my behalf.

  

  Kareena Kapoor Khan
  • People
  • Work
  • Why

• Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.

  

  Victor Hugo
  • Poetry
  • Creator
  • Queen

• Scrawling 'I'm gay' in lipstick on your parents' bedroom mirror may demonstrate a personal signature of the highest style, but is not particularly sensitive to their feelings. Upon hearing me utter those words almost twenty years ago, my own mother did what and self-respecting middle-class mom would do: went directly into a seizure.

  

  Lance Loud
  • May
  • Mother
  • Parents

• No one person could have broken up a band, especially one the size of the Beatles.

  

  Yoko Ono
  • Up
  • Band
  • Broken

• I do like children, but only as people. Not as if they're a special category.

  

  Quentin Blake
  • People
  • Children
  • Special

• Material, space, and color are the main aspects of visual art. Everyone knows that there is material that can be picked up and sold, but no one sees space and color. Two of the main aspects of art are invisible; the basic nature of art is invisible.

  

  Donald Judd
  • Up
  • Art
  • Nature

• Real leadership comes from the quiet nudging of an inner voice. It comes from realizing that the time has come to move beyond waiting to doing.

  

  Madeleine Albright
  • Time
  • Real
  • Waiting

• I am a normal guy from the Black Forest, and I do not compare myself with the geniuses.

  

  Jurgen Klopp
  • Guy
  • Compare
  • Geniuses

• Parents needn't bother driving small children around to see the purple mountains' majesties; the children will go right on duking it out in the back seat and whining for food as if you were showing them Cincinnati. No one under twenty really wants to look at scenery.

  

  Barbara Holland
  • Children
  • Parents
  • Mountains

• I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue. If it does, I can feel a sense of momentum - the poem finds a reason for continuing.

  

  Billy Collins