Quotessence
Home / Authors / Billy Collins
Billy Collins

Billy Collins Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllThinkingWritingPoetWayIfsKindPoetryReaderLinesMeanLittlesPoetry IsTryingReadingDifficultyEndsFirstsI CanKnowsLight

Famous Billy Collins Quotes

“I was influenced by the Beats because I actually just began to commit adolescence around 1955, when "Howl" and Rebel Without a Cause and a lot of other new things were popping up. (Again I'm trying to give you a finite version of this career.) And then I came under the sway of Wallace Stevens when I was in college and graduate school, and basically set as a life goal the ambition of writing third-rate Wallace Stevens. I thought I would be completely content if I was recognized at some later point in my life as a third-rate Wallace Stevens.”

IfsGivingWritingTryingWould BeSchoolCausesGoalCareersCollegeAmbitionBeatsThirdsRateCommitVersionsRebelGraduatesNew ThingsAdolescenceFiniteLife GoalHowlGraduate SchoolPoppingRebels Without A Cause
Author:Billy Collins
Create image

“By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.”

IfsWayKindMeanSimpleClearReaderUnderstoodAreasClarityGroundedComfortingDisorientation
Author:Billy Collins
Create image

“As soon as I start to write I'm very aware, I'm trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick up this poem, a stranger. So when I'm writing - and I think that this is important for all writers - I'm trying to be a writer and a reader back and forth. I write two lines or three lines. I will immediately stop and turn into a reader instead of a writer, and I'll read those lines as if I had never seen them before and as if I had never written them.”

IfsThinkingWritingTryingWellsTwoImportantMightTurnsThreeLinesWrittenReaderPicksStrangerBack And Forth
Author:Billy Collins
Create image

“The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.”

IfsFirstsLittlesUsedNamesMemoriesBrainNovelHeardDecidedPhonesConclusionTitlesFishingPlotVillageSouthernRetiringHarborsHeartbreakingHemisphere
Author:Billy Collins
Create image