black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you’re simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.

Billy Collins

Bugs Bunny is my muse.
BILLY COLLINS

Bugs Bunnies Creativity
I saw him looking up at her and what she was doing the way the eyes of saints are painted when they are looking up at God when he is doing something remarkable, something that identifies him as God.
BILLY COLLINS

God Looking Remarkable Saint Something
I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word accessible.
BILLY COLLINS

Accessible Poems Thinking Underrated
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
I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
BILLY COLLINS

Across Ant Confession Poem Shore Waving
Form is any aspect of a poem that encourages it to stay whole and not drift off into chaos.
BILLY COLLINS

Aspect Chaos Form
I felt at some point that I had nothing to lose, and [laughs] maybe I was wrong. I think, you know, there’s always these little autobiographical secrets behind things. I think I was really attacking my earlier self, and this kind of pretentious figure.
BILLY COLLINS

Laughing Self Thinking
It’s a good thing to get poetry off the shelves and more into public life.
BILLY COLLINS

Good Life Public Shelves Things
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.
BILLY COLLINS

Astray Beginning Clarity Disorientated Poem Reader
I could look at you forever and never see the two of us together
BILLY COLLINS

Forever Together Two
While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.
BILLY COLLINS

Novelists Poet Typewriters
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 the pleasure of form is that you have a companion with you besides all the poetry you have ever read.
BILLY COLLINS

Form Pleasure Read Thinking
When I wrote I took on the role of the despondent and difficult to understand person. Whereas in life, I was easy to understand, to the point of being simple-minded maybe.
BILLY COLLINS

Easy Person Roles Simple Understand
Listeners are kind of ambushed… if a poem just happens to be said when they’re listening to the radio. The listener doesn’t have time to deploy what I call their ‘poetry deflector shields’ that were installed in high school – there’s little time to resist the poem.
BILLY COLLINS

Listening Radio School
I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can’t afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere.
BILLY COLLINS

Distraction Left Path Right Thinking

The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you’re simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you’re simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Billy Collins Quotes