Billy Collins Quotes

The obituaries shot up to the top of my list when I discovered Robert McG. Thomas, the 'Times' obit writer who redesigned its traditional form and added a measure of stylistic elegance.

Billy Collins

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Quotes to Explore

• It's extraordinary what children put up with. I happened to see two of my uncles put my father up against the wall of my grandmother's house and knock his teeth out, because he'd been unpleasant to my mother. The next day I went upstairs and found my father making a rather half-hearted attempt to gas himself.

  

  Jack Straw
  • Up
  • Children
  • Mother

• Khomeini was not a puppet like Arafat or Qaddafi or the many other dictators I met in the Islamic world. He was a sort of Pope, a sort of king - a real leader.

  

  Oriana Fallaci
  • World
  • Real
  • King

• When we were younger, we sang at the dinner table. We started doing two part harmony, then three part, and then we added back up tapes and instruments.

  

  Isaac Hanson Hanson
  • Up
  • Doing
  • Harmony

• I grew up as a country boy.

  

  Ian Somerhalder
  • Up
  • Country
  • Boy

• A sack is way better than any nightclub. A touchdown is way better than any bar experience I've ever had.

  

  J. J. Watt
  • Experience
  • Way
  • Better

• As far as religion goes, I feel like everyone should have their own one-on-one with God.

  

  Ja Rule
  • God
  • Religion
  • Feel

• Love should be an inspiration, not an obligation.

  

  Zsa Zsa Gabor
  • Love
  • Inspiration
  • Obligation

• I don't care tuppence whether I'm forced into a leadership position or not. I'd much sooner not.

  

  E. P. Thompson
  • Care
  • Leadership
  • Forced

• The first decent building I did with my own practice was a chapel in Taiwan.

  

  I. M. Pei
  • Practice
  • First
  • Building

• The actual, original 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,' I have vague memories of because I was pretty small, but I loved, loved, loved it. I have only those weird, visceral little-kid memories: I remember the extreme flat, two dimensional green that was their skin or the weird pizza with no sauce - it was just like yellow, drippy cheese.

  

  Mae Whitman
  • Remember
  • Pretty
  • Small

• I'm the eldest at 51, and if the Stones can drag themselves around once more, then there's a few more albums in us.

  

  Barry Gibb Bee Gees
  • More
  • U.S.
  • Stones

• I don't care about how much other actors get.

  

  Daniel Craig
  • Care
  • Other
  • How

• I would like for people to hear my music and hear/realize that people and experiences are deeper than what's at face value. Hopefully, with the span of my career, I can try to convey that in more ways than one.

  

  La'Porsha Renae
  • People
  • Music
  • Career

• I don't like baseball movies. I like movies about moral courage and people who are indomitable and courageous and right.

  

  Harrison Ford
  • People
  • Moral
  • Courage

• All of my life I have stayed away from violence and the instruments of violence, and have seen a legal, democratic struggle as the only means to achieve change.

  

  Osman Baydemir
  • Life
  • Change
  • Violence

• I get paid the same money if I'm fighting on pay-per-view or on Fight Pass, and Fight Pass is just getting started. It's the future. The Internet, many people watch it.

  

  Rafael dos Anjos
  • People
  • Money
  • Future

• The just man is not the product of a day, but of a long brooding and a painful birth. To become a power for peace, a man must first pass through experiences which lead him to see things in their different aspects: it is necessary that he have a wide horizon, and breathe various atmospheres--in a word, from crossing, one after another, paths and points of view the most diverse, and sometimes the most contradictory, he must acquire the faculty of putting himself in the place of others and appreciating them.

  

  Charles Wagner
  • Different
  • Long
  • Power

• We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease.

  

  Wendell Berry
  • God
  • Truth
  • True

• Coming into a game in the eighth or ninth inning is like parachuting behind enemy lines. And sometimes the chute doesn't open. You have to live with that. It's an occupational hazard.

  

  Dan Quisenberry
  • Live
  • Game
  • Sometimes

• I find television to be a bit like a meat grinder. It's like, you have a cow, you put it through a meat grinder, and out comes a hot dog. It's almost unrecognizable.

  

  Jillian Michaels
  • Dog

• I don't think it should matter to the American people what color skin is on their president. What should matter is the content of their character.

  

  Dennis Haysbert
  • People
  • Character
  • American

• The obituaries shot up to the top of my list when I discovered Robert McG. Thomas, the 'Times' obit writer who redesigned its traditional form and added a measure of stylistic elegance.

  

  Billy Collins
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