Billy Collins Quotes
I really have a distaste for poets who announce themselves at 50 yards; you know, here he comes, you know, with the beret and the cane and the cape and the whatever - whatever mishegas is part of the outfit there.
Quotes to Explore
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I believed I was invincible.
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I feel pressure, but my emotions just don't show that much in my face.
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People ask me to describe myself, but it's a very personal thing. You don't feel comfortable.
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No government should ever be big enough to substitute for the family.
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My daughter passed away in 2003.
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He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
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We are a country of artisans and a country of manufacturing. I think Japanese textile technology is the best in the world.
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Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I'm walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.
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It makes me feel good that I can now sit there and go, I've worked with Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, all the great actors that I've worked with... Sir Ben Kingsley.
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I am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. My mother is a survivor of both polio and of the Igbo genocide during her country's civil war in the late 1960s.
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A heart makes a good home for the friend.
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It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
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I can spend hours in a grocery store. I get so excited when I see food, I go crazy. I spend hours arranging my baskets so that everything fits in and nothing gets squashed. I'm really anal about it, actually.
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There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle.
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Let us not say that we will decide on a political basis at the national level that no State is competent to regulate the practice of medicine in that State if they decide to allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana, because that is what we are talking about.
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I'm taking a vow not to advise.
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I have always been an active part of my community.
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You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.
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I used to think that the British press were particularly awful to Cherie Blair. I think Blair's foreign policy was a complete disaster, but the British press, when they wanted to explain why Blair took unexpected moves, they did create Cherie as the power behind the throne.
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With experience, you understand expectations, you understand consequences, but sometimes it gets a little bit hard, especially for me, that I'm a perfectionist - I want to analyse everything. And sometimes it's most important to just let go and trust your instincts. This is what I need to do more of.
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All my books deal with the effect of intent upon action, how our understanding of good and evil depends heavily on context.
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I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me.
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Not houses finely roofed or the stones of walls well builded, nay nor canals and dockyards make the city, but men able to use their opportunity.
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I really have a distaste for poets who announce themselves at 50 yards; you know, here he comes, you know, with the beret and the cane and the cape and the whatever - whatever mishegas is part of the outfit there.
