Billy Collins Quotes
I'm happy to stick with my persona. There are themes of love lost and love regained, but the main themes of all poems are basically love and death, and that seems to be the message of poetry.
Quotes to Explore
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The more success you get, you start to be harder on yourself or more afraid of the looking glass. You have to learn to build a thicker skin because people are paying more attention.
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I wish somebody had given me the news that ideas don't just fall on your head like fairy dust. You have to treat that like a job. You have to spend hours each day, where you're just like, 'This is the part of the day when I'm looking for an idea.'
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When you're bullied in high school, even if it's the smallest amount, or you're actually tortured, I feel like everybody carries that with them. They always think of that one person who treated them badly in high school.
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Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.
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Relationships can be very traumatic. But being in a healthy relationship can be very empowering.
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If you're a large corporation, you can afford to pay the money to register patents, but if you're an individual like me, you can't.
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For me beauty is valued more than anything - the beauty that is manifest in a curved line or in an act of creativity.
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Animals awaken, first facially, then bodily. Men's bodies wake before their faces do. The animal sleeps within its body, man sleeps with his body in his mind.
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Growing up on a mountain in Tennessee, I spent most of my childhood outside.
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I wouldn't say I'm vain - I'm just in a job where the way you look is important. Well, at least the facelift wasn't vanity, but the hair was.
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Living in Malibu is like being in a bubble, so discovering others that are so different from me has been incredibly gratifying.
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They say women and music should never be dated.
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The hard work definitely paid off and hard work always does.
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The days of the painter at the Bauhaus appear to be truly over. They are estranged from the actual core of present activities, and their influence is more restricting than inspiring.
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When you play piano, your left hand and right hand are synced. Your brain basically has a clock, so that the right hand knows that 0.3 seconds after I hit this key, I need to hit that one. And the right hand knows not to hit keys that the left hand is playing, so the hands do not collide.
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To some extent, the act of creation and the act of selling are hard to disentangle. If you create something, whether it's a painting or a company, I think if you care about it, you have some obligation to go out and tell people about it.
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I learned a tremendous amount about dialogue because I suffered as an actor.
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It's very hard to self-motivate without someone standing over you snarling, ready to hurl the chalk at your head at the slightest slackening.
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I love to cook when I have the time. I don't cook French or Mexican food with exact recipes. I just go to the supermarket and buy things that look good, and I mix it all together and invent something. Ninety-five percent of the time, I'm lucky. Sometimes not so lucky, and I say, 'Let's go out to dinner.'
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Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.
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Football is my sanctuary. It's where I go to escape. It's where I'm most happy.
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Photography was a way for me to freeze time and to capture the moments that were happy and healthy. I saw a photo as a way to go back to a memory if I ever needed to.
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I'm happy to stick with my persona. There are themes of love lost and love regained, but the main themes of all poems are basically love and death, and that seems to be the message of poetry.
