Billy Collins Quotes

If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out. In a poem, the pen is more like a flashlight, a Geiger counter, or one of those metal detectors that people walk around beaches with.

Billy Collins

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Quotes to Explore

• Age is just a number. Unless, that is, you live in Hollywood, where there's this notion that if you haven't hit it big by your 20s, you may as well hit the road.

  

  Kate Walsh
  • Live
  • May
  • Age

• If you look at the scientists who really make a difference, they think boldly. They're not afraid to question what they see.

  

  Taylor Wilson
  • Question
  • Look
  • Make A Difference

• A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.

  

  Nadia Boulanger
  • Work
  • Great
  • Liberty

• Now, performing is second nature and I love every second of it. It is a very emotional thing when I can't play a song; maybe I'm hitting on something that I don't want to deal with. All of it is so personal. It is like therapy.

  

  Vanessa Carlton
  • Nature
  • Like
  • Emotional

• Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

  

  J. B. Priestley
  • May
  • Society
  • Comedy

• Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

  

  Samuel Butler
  • Nature
  • Law
  • First

• I know what I look like - a weird, sad clown puppet. I'm fine with that.

  

  Rainn Wilson
  • Weird
  • Sad
  • Look

• We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

  

  Abraham Maslow
  • Fear
  • Know
  • More

• I don't have a great instrument. I don't have the kind of ungodly control over my voice and body that great actors have. And I've worked with enough great actors to know that I'm not one.

  

  Aaron Sorkin
  • Great
  • Control
  • Voice

• And when did mere preaching do any good? Put something in the place of these things. Fill the vacuum of the mind.

  

  Frances Wright
  • Good
  • Mind
  • Place

• Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written.

  

  Wendy E. Long
  • Important
  • Political
  • Law

• I have this first album that sells more than 100,000 copies in its first week, debuts at number two, goes gold, the single goes platinum, we're doing Madison Square Garden.

  

  Halsey
  • Single
  • Doing
  • Gold

• Without children, men have more liberty to earn less - that is, they are free to pursue more fulfilling and less lucrative careers, like writing or art or teaching social studies.

  

  Warren Farrell
  • Men
  • Writing
  • Children

• My message is: You don't have to give up being popular, fun, or fashionable in order to be smart; they can go hand and hand. Doing math is a great way to exercise your brain; being smart is going to make you more powerful in life.

  

  Danica McKellar
  • Life
  • Up
  • Great

• Mumbai is like Manhattan. There's a certain pace, a social life and the thrill of a professional life.

  

  Madhuri Dixit
  • Life
  • Professional
  • Pace

• I go out and speak to women's groups all the time, and I say, 'Guys, you gotta laugh and find the humor in things. You gotta pass it on.'

  

  Vicki Lawrence
  • Time
  • Women
  • Humor

• One knows less about one's own destiny than about anything else on earth.

  

  Gabrielle Roy
  • Earth
  • Destiny
  • Own

• I need to have proper equipment when I work out, and the Nike Frees are light, comfortable, and great for training. I also usually bring a short-sleeve or long-sleeve compression shirt and a pair of shorts.

  

  Sam Bradford
  • Work
  • Great
  • Long

• If a film is very clever and well-written, that's what gives you freedom as a director.

  

  Patrice Leconte
  • Freedom
  • You
  • Clever

• Partly because the town is just finicky, there are strange Catch 22 clauses in the consciousness of this community and one of them was that you, I found out, you can't do a comedy unless you've just done a comedy.

  

  Val Kilmer
  • Done
  • Community
  • Comedy

• If you don't set the tone for the day, the devil will set it for you.

  

  Joel Osteen
  • Devil

• Whether it's Jack Kennedy or Bill Clinton or others, the personal lives do come into play, and people do judge you for that.

  

  Pete Sessions
  • People
  • Judge

• Everybody's just emulated us and now everybody just kinda takes our sound as their foundations.

  

  Jeffrey Ross Hyman Ramones

• If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out. In a poem, the pen is more like a flashlight, a Geiger counter, or one of those metal detectors that people walk around beaches with.

  

  Billy Collins
  • People