"Billy Collins writes lovely poems. Limpid, gently..." - Quote by John Updike

“That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.”

“There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.”

“Life is a razor, you are always in hot water or a scrape.”

“I know as well as thee that I am no poet bornIt is a trade, I never learnt nor indeed could learnIf I make verses-'tis in spiteOf nature and my stars I write.”

“Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.”

“I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.”

“I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug addicts but they had fun. They were real people. They formed the culture of American literature. Hemingway admired Tolstoy, Tolstoy admired Pushkin, and Mailer admired Hemingway. It all flows down. The greats are all connected. One day I'm gonna write a book myself. The first chapter will be about what a rough deal my momma got. She believed in you guys and your society.”

“We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters.”

“Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.”