Billy Collins Quotes
The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.
Quotes to Explore
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To me, 'Underground Luxury' is kinda like a contrasting title, and the reason for that is because on this album I plan on introducing to people and reintroducing to people the side of me that they didn't see on the first album.
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I suffer from a more complex, persistent fear. It manifests itself in nerves, and on film the camera sees even the tiniest evidence of this. So you have to learn that when the director calls 'Action,' you don't go to this place of tension, but somehow you become free.
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My view is that life is too short. I'm not being melodramatic or anything, but when your mother dies in your arms - just you and her, and it's one o'clock in the morning, and you're waiting for her to exhale - you just think, life's too bloody short to argue about the little things.
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My parents never understood why I didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer. They're Cuban immigrants who wanted to give their children the American dream, and, to them, that was more of what 'the dream' entailed.
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I have made enough money to secure my family and that is all I care about.
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As for advice for aspiring authors, the best I can give is to be brave. It sounds like a simple enough thing, but it's not. Rejection is such an integral part of this journey, and it never goes away.
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I worked with the Neville Brothers for 40-some years on the highway, and up and down since I can remember - funk from New Orleans.
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All my life, the naysayers have told me that I can't win because I'm a progressive... because I'm a woman... even because I'm a lesbian.
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What I loathe is the multi-national conglomerates who must take responsibility for the degradation and pollution of so much of our landscape with their factory farming and greed.
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To me, there's no point in writing merely to entertain.
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The fight against international terrorism isn't just a fight against a bunch of misguided extremists; it is a fight to defend the values that we hold dear.
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The second trial was a fair trial. I do not call it a second trial. I call it a fair trial, as opposed to the first trial, which was an unfair trial, a Roman holiday.
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Orange blossom water would make a magical addition to your store cupboard.
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Internet journalism is not a world we know very well at all. It's conducted more on the screen and less in bars, which makes it rather less useful for getting stories about people throwing up over one another, which is what one's after.
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Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.
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I'd like to explore the more abstract side of people's minds, as opposed to the usual sitcom stuff. I don't want to do the typical sitcom-type humor. I'd want to do stuff like go bowling with pineapples.
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Natural gas is better distributed than any other fuel in the United States. It's down every street and up every alley. There's a pipeline.
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I don't want to set the world up for surprises.
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I'll confess right here that I secretly wish I'd have drawn a strip about a little boy with a fake tiger, going for adventures throughout the universe in spaceships of his imagination.
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Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege.
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Every moment of this strange and lovely life from dawn to dusk, is a miracle. Somewhere, always a rose is opening its petals to the dawn. Somewhere, always, a flower is fading in the dusk.
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The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It wasobviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.
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Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.
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The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.
