Billy Collins Quotes

But comedy I'd love to do as much as humanly possible.

Comedy will always be central to what I do, it's just an instinct for me, but I am a writer and always have been.

No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form.

There are elements of irony in my work, of course.

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

Most of what I write is comedy.

My dad was a poet. He saw the world through unique glasses, with simplicity, spirituality, and humor.

I'd say that comedy is my God-given gift.

Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

When people ask me how is it I was a musician, I facetiously say that I'm a firm believer in reincarnation and in a previous life I was Johann Sebastian Bach's guide dog.

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes.

I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.

I would love to do some more comedy. I would love to do some silliness. I would love to do some characters that have greater vulnerability.

I think comedy, so much of it comes out of the strange sort of golden instant 'cause you don't know why it's funny, but you captured it.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

Comedy is a very, very, very stringent business.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

I loved comedy all my life. I think it's a real powerful art form.

For me, comedy is richer and larger than anything else.

I wanted to be that quirky girl who writes funny songs that still have meaning.

When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry.

Most of my ideas just come out funny.

I'm crazy about Shakespeare, who was a notorious word inventor. And my wife is an English teacher, and she's hilarious.