Billy Collins Quotes

The poets who have written the best poems about war seem to be the poets whose countries have experienced an invasion or vicious dictatorships.

Billy Collins

• War

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Quotes to Explore

• My parents divorced when I was seven. Because divorce is messy, for good or ill, they sent me to boarding school.

  

  Jack Davenport
  • Good
  • School
  • Parents

• I'm too self-serious for a comedy.

  

  Damien Chazelle
  • Comedy
  • Serious
  • Too

• I am born and raised in the Bronx. Where I grew up, it is a really working-class neighborhood and it does give you a really good work ethic.

  

  Cara Buono
  • Up
  • Good
  • Work

• I could maybe coach kids' basketball. I know enough about basketball where I feel like I could coach 12-year-olds pretty effectively.

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • Kids
  • Pretty
  • Know

• As a younger actor, I had delusions. I would dream of Scorsese and De Niro; I would meet people, and it would be like this, and it would change moviemaking in France, and Paris would become the center of the world.

  

  Vincent Cassel
  • People
  • World
  • Dream

• Medical professionals, not insurance company bureaucrats, should be making health care decisions.

  

  Barbara Boxer
  • Health
  • Decisions
  • Insurance

• I'm a huge Disney nut. I have been since I was a little kid.

  

  Zachary Levi
  • Kid
  • Disney
  • Been

• To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.

  

  Isaac Asimov
  • Nature
  • Human
  • Insult

• People always ask me, 'Is there a rivalry between the Nickelodeon and Disney stars? Do you guys hate each other?' Like everyone has to be on one team. If you're a Selena Gomez fan, you can't be a Victoria Justice fan. We're both half-Latin, and people put us in the same category.

  

  Victoria Justice
  • People
  • Hate
  • Team

• I love the Web, but the basis of my work is going through the physical books. When you go to the library, you see other books around on the shelves that you never knew existed. You can flip through a book and see the whole outline of it.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Work
  • Book
  • Library

• Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

  

  Carl Sandburg
  • Poetry
  • Synthesis
  • Biscuits

• How movies are financed, it's a world market now... I feel like, you know, the independent film way of working is something that was in my bones. It's like being a part of a punk band, but no one's singing punk rock anymore. Only a few bands are able to play, and Woody Allen is one of them.

  

  Parker Posey
  • World
  • Band
  • Rock

• We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Time
  • Great
  • Society

• Since I played a warrior in 'Magadheera,' my character sported shoulder-length hair and a thick beard.

  

  Ram Charan
  • Character
  • Hair
  • Warrior

• Marriage is a social construct, but I still believe in it.

  

  Talulah Riley
  • Believe
  • Marriage
  • Social

• The day I make movies that Rupert Murdoch likes and admires is the day I'll throw in the towel, because he's got no taste.

  

  Irwin Winkler
  • Day
  • Movies
  • Towel

• If you're a casting director, you're going to be curious to see what Timothy Spall's son is like. But when you get in the door, you have to have something to offer.

  

  Rafe Spall
  • Son
  • Door
  • Director

• I don't mind Ryan Bader thinking he deserves a title shot.

  

  Daniel Cormier
  • Thinking
  • Mind
  • Shot

• I invented animals and birds – I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.

  

  Jack Prelutsky
  • Fun
  • Friend
  • Working

• Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure.

  

  Norman Vincent Peale
  • Failure
  • Attitude
  • Facing

• A lot of my world-view is formed by the places I've been.

  

  James Ransone
  • World

• I am convinced that in the upcoming chapter of the struggle, I can be more useful to the inevitable change that will soon come to Cuba, to Cuba's freedom, as a private citizen dedicated to helping the heroes within Cuba.

  

  Lincoln Diaz-Balart
  • Freedom
  • Struggle

• The bottom line is that I'm an actor, so when somebody pitches me a great part, it's a no-brainer. You never know what it's gonna be like, in terms of the actual experience. You can be really excited about a part that can turn out shitty, you can have a bad time, there's a bad egg or two or three, in the bunch, or the producers are weird, or something like that.

  

  Kathy Bates
  • Time
  • Great
  • Experience

• The poets who have written the best poems about war seem to be the poets whose countries have experienced an invasion or vicious dictatorships.

  

  Billy Collins
  • War