A Quote by Billy Collins

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

Quote Topics

Agenda Discovery Implement Instrument Just Letter Out Pen Rather Record Recording Resignation Simply Something Than Thought Using Write

Quote Author

Billy Collins
American - Poet
Born: March 22, 1941

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. In a poem, the pen is more like a flashlight, a Geiger counter, or one of those metal detectors that people walk around beaches with.

Billy Collins

If someone writes a great story, people praise the author, not the pen. People don't say, 'Oh what an incredible pen...where can I get a pen like this so I can write great stories?' Well, I am just a pen in the hands of the Lord. He is the author. All praise should go to him.

Keith Green

First, consider the pen you write with. It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand. You don't want to slow up your hand even more with a slow pen. A ballpoint, a pencil, a felt tip, for sure, are slow. Go to a stationery store and see what feels good to you. Try out different kinds. Don't get too fancy and expensive. I mostly use a cheap Sheaffer fountain pen, about $1.95.... You want to be able to feel the connection and texture of the pen on paper.

Natalie Goldberg

I wrote my friend a letter using a highlighting pen. But he could not read it, he thought I was trying to show him certain parts of a piece of paper.

Mitch Hedberg

Keeping the pen out of your hand as much as possible is the best way to write a song, in my estimation. But the pen must come in to tighten it up.

Glen Hansard

I remember reading about a court case where a man tried to stab a judge with a pencil. There are Google pages full of similar instances around the world. It's obvious that the pencil lends itself to precisely that kind of use. It's not as lacking in dominance as you might think. I have an article on the fallacy of the designer intent because a lot of designers think they can design uses into technology. You can't do that. I use the pen, I make the mark, but the pen is also using me. The pen could be said to be allowing these kinds of marks. I can't do just anything with the pen.

Don Ihde

The pen is mightier than the sword, if you shoot that pen out of a gun

Stephen Colbert

I got to take classes in writing with a fountain pen, and actually, something you make is your own textbook. So, while you're learning about something, you have to write essays on it, and then you handwrite in cursive, in fountain pen, your essays out on beautiful paper and you bind it together into a book that you hand in at the end of the course.

Maya Hawke

I have a real aversion to machines. I write with a pen. Then I read it to someone who writes it onto the computer. What are those computer letters made of anyway? Light? Too insubstantial. Paper, you can feel it. A pen. There's a connection. A pen goes exactly at your speed, whereas that machine jumps. And then, that machine is waiting for you, just humming "uh-huh, yes?

Fran Lebowitz

The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is.

Janet Malcolm

I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.

Gustave Flaubert

I write in pen because it works. A fountain pen is no good for writing in the way I do because I'd have to decide, each time I stopped, how long I was likely to stop for in order to know whether or not to put the cap on. But I never know. So instead, I use a ballpoint - a Montblanc, to be precise - the most comfortably balanced pen I've ever found.

Philip Pullman

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

Natalie Goldberg

I don't write directly on to the computer because I don't think well facing forward with fingers on a keyboard. I think better looking down holding a pen. And the concentration quotient of pen and paper is higher than when I'm moving words around on screen.

Joshua Ferris

Technology must remain a tool. It's a great tool, but technology is the pen to write the book. It's not the book. If you have a great pen, maybe you'll write faster or it will look better, but at the end, you have something to say, or you don't.