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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

Billy Collins

Related Topics

HeartNamesWall

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More Billy Collins Quotes

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  I can’t picture myself starting out aiming to do anything or having much of an agenda.I think in writing a poem, I’m making some tonal adjustments, and it took me a long time to allow anything like fun into my poetry.

  BILLY COLLINS
  FunThinkingWriting
• 

  High School is the place where poetry goes to die.

  BILLY COLLINS
  DiesHighSchool
• 

  …balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.

  BILLY COLLINS
  LostNeedsWish
• 

  Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

  BILLY COLLINS
  LakesMoonNightPointing
• 

  Form is any aspect of a poem that encourages it to stay whole and not drift off into chaos.

  BILLY COLLINS
  AspectChaosForm
• 

  I stared up at the ebbing quarter moon and the stars scattered like a handful of salt across the faraway sky.

  BILLY COLLINS
  AcrossFarawayMoonSkyStars
• 

  Robert Frost really started this whole thing rolling. He was, I believe, the first poet who started going to colleges. Before that, poets didn’t give public readings very often, certainly not – there was no circuit of schools.

  BILLY COLLINS
  BelievePoetReadingSchoolStarted
• 

  You either continue to write puerile bilge, or you change. In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

  BILLY COLLINS
  SimplifyingThingVoice
• 

  Bugs Bunny is my muse.

  BILLY COLLINS
  BugsBunniesCreativity
• 

  A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.

  BILLY COLLINS
  CoatFloatingMidnightTailsWind
• 

  Some difficulty is warranted and other difficulty I think is gratuitous. And I think I can tell the difference. There are certainly very difficult poets that I really enjoy reading.

  BILLY COLLINS
  DifferencesDifficultPoetReadingThinking
• 

  It is as if one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the Southern Hemisphere of the brain.

  BILLY COLLINS
  BrainMemoriesSouthern
• 

  That’s the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.

  BILLY COLLINS
  PoemReaderTalkingTravelWriting
• 

  I’m speaking to someone I’m trying to get to fall in love with me. I’m trying to speak intimately to one person. That should be clear. I’m not speaking to an audience. I’m not writing for the podium.

  BILLY COLLINS
  FallingLovePodiumSilenceWriting
• 

  Particularly when I thought of myself as a Wallace Stevens acolyte, I wrote very difficult poetry and I was really guilty of not knowing what I was talking about. I was going for a kind of clever verbal effect. I was trying to sound linguistically or verbally interesting.

  BILLY COLLINS
  CleverReadingTalking
• 

  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.

  BILLY COLLINS
  ConsciousnessLinesMeanWriting