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Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

Billy Collins

But I think you could also put it a different way. You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.
BILLY COLLINS

Different Obviously Probably Unquote Way
The really authentic thing about humor is that anyone can pretend to be serious. Anyone who’s ever had a job – in fact, we’re pretending to be serious now, more or less.
BILLY COLLINS

Anymore Facts Jobs Serious
I think more influential than Emily Dickinson or Coleridge or Wordsworth on my imagination were Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons.
BILLY COLLINS

Brother Cartoon Creativity Thinking Wordsworth
I don’t know if anyone’s reading it, but poets are still flying around the country going from lectern to lectern.That circuitry has become very well-established.
BILLY COLLINS

Anyone Country Established Going Lectern
I always think W.S. Merwin’s poems will last of anyone writing today. If I had to bet on posterity I would bet Merwin.
BILLY COLLINS

Finding Yourself Thinking Writing
I could look at you forever and never see the two of us together
BILLY COLLINS

Forever Together Two
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.
BILLY COLLINS

Aware Stranger Thinking Trying Two Writing
When I began to dare to be clear, because I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You’re out in the open field. You’re actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it’s easy to criticize something you can understand.
BILLY COLLINS

Comprehensible Exposed Real Risk Saying Thinking
It’s a good thing to get poetry off the shelves and more into public life.
BILLY COLLINS

Good Life Public Shelves Things
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.
BILLY COLLINS

Instead never Reader Stop Writer Written
Poems are not easy to start, and they’re not easy to finish. There’s a great pleasure in – I wouldn’t say ease, but maybe kind of a fascinated ease that accompanies the actual writing of the poem. I find it very difficult to get started.
BILLY COLLINS

Difference Ease Graduation Kind Writing
Death is what makes life fun.
BILLY COLLINS

Death Fun Life
Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.
BILLY COLLINS

Boundaries Insanity Land
The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.
BILLY COLLINS

Constructed DNA First Keys Signatures Time
In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.
BILLY COLLINS

Oneself Process Voice
One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.
BILLY COLLINS

Differences Everybody Poetry Self

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

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Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

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