• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

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

Popular Authors

Marilyn Monroe Paulo Coelho Abraham Lincoln C. S. Lewis Khalil Gibran Charlie Chaplin Gautama Buddha Isaac Newton

Prevoius|

More Billy Collins Quotes

• 

  I see the progress typical in some of my poems as starting with something simple and moving into something more demanding. This is certainly the pattern of weird poetry.

  BILLY COLLINS
  MovingProgressSimple
• 

  The great thing about the game of poetry is that it’s always your turn – I guess that goes back to my being an only child. So once it’s under way, there is a sense of flow.

  BILLY COLLINS
  ChildGameGreatPoetryThingUnderWay
• 

  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.

  BILLY COLLINS
  DecidedHeardHemisphereMemoriesSouthernSuddenly
• 

  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.

  BILLY COLLINS
  AloneDialogueSimplySonnetWrong
• 

  I find it strange that – at least in my take on it – the people who are the most alarmed about the dire times we live in are the ones who seem to be humorless, in their taste for poetry anyway.

  BILLY COLLINS
  AlarmedHumorlessPeopleThinkingWay
• 

  I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son, each one stitched into his own private coat, together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

  BILLY COLLINS
  AlphabeticalBookCountryNightPeopleShelvesSon
• 

  The sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader’s part in the poet’s autobiographical life, in the poet’s memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.

  BILLY COLLINS
  AutobiographicalDifficultiesProblemReader
• 

  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
  ComprehensibleExposedRealRiskSayingThinking
• 

  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
  AcrossAntConfessionPoemShoreWaving
• 

  You’ll find i-poetry, you’ll find that you can download poetry, that you can stuff your i-pod with recorded poetry. So just to answer the question that way, I think that poetry is gonna catch up with that technology quite soon.

  BILLY COLLINS
  AnswerTechnologyThinking
• 

  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
• 

  I could feel the day offering itself to me, and I wanted nothing more than to be in the moment-but which moment? Not that one, or that one, or that one.

  BILLY COLLINS
  FeelsMomentsOffering
• 

  The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion,

  BILLY COLLINS
  ConclusionFishingMemoriesNovelPhones
• 

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

  BILLY COLLINS
  AspectChaosForm
• 

  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
  DifferencesEverybodyPoetrySelf
• 

  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