Quotessence
Home / Authors / Billy Collins
Billy Collins

Billy Collins Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllThinkingWritingPoetWayIfsKindPoetryReaderLinesMeanLittlesPoetry IsTryingReadingDifficultyEndsFirstsI CanKnowsLight

Famous Billy Collins Quotes

“To write poetry is to be very alone, but you always have the company of your influences. But you also have the company of the form itself, which has a kind of consciousness. I mean, the sonnet will simply tell you, that's too many syllables or that's too many lines or that's the wrong place. So, instead of being alone, you're in dialogue with the form.”

WritingKindMeanFormLinesConsciousnessCompanyInfluenceDialoguePoetry IsSonnetSyllables
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

“This is not what it is like to be you, I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds flew over the rooftop. It is just me thinking about being you. And before I headed back down the hill, I walked in a circle around your house, making an invisible line which you would have to cross before dark.”

ThinkingHouseLinesDarkCrossesCloudsI RealizedCirclesInvisibleHillsBe YouMagnificentFlewRooftops
Book:The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems
Create image