A Quote by Billy Collins

All they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

Quote Topics

Beating Begin Chair Confession Find Hose Means Out Poem Really Really Mean Rope Tie Torture Want

Quote Author

Billy Collins
American - Poet
Born: March 22, 1941

Introduction To Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. 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

I don't know about torture. I have educated myself on many things but on torture I have not known the boundary between what is torture and what isn't torture. I know the NRA tie these people (rebels, etc.) when they catch them. They tie their hands backwards. I am now being told that is torture. It is the traditional method.

Yoweri Museveni

We have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out. If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet.

James Hansen

Failure's a marker of success in its own right because you went out and tried something... If you really don't want to fail, go find a comfortable chair and stay there. Just don't go out and do anything.

Whitney Wolfe Herd

If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.

Rita Dove

Women? Well, they are gods. They will always fascinate me. As for rope, I always have it with me. Even when I forget my film, the rope is always in my bag. Since I can't tie their hearts up, I tie their bodies up instead.

Nobuyoshi Araki

I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer.’ It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings.

Stanley Kunitz

I want to reiterate that my understanding of the poem is not the poem's core, true meaning. Once a poem goes out into the world, the poet is just one more reader.

James Arthur

Look out sinners because if you do not go to confession, confession will come to you. The Catholic Church in northern England has launched a mobile confession unit called the Mercy Bus.

Peter Sagal

I'm beating all the weakness out of myself, beating all the give-up out of myself, I'm beating the lack of cardio, I'm beating the lack of confidence - any sign of weakness that's in my heart, I'm getting rid of it

Jon Jones

You have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it. When you're really passionate, you're going to grab hold of every rope you see, and wrap them around your arms and legs to claw your way out. And that's the way I've felt in my life.

Viola Davis

My spleen burst. I remember feeling my heart beating really fast. Beating right out of my chest.

Amy Purdy

Things that I have a hard time being able to fully grasp, sometimes writing the poem helps me work through it. Or I get to the end of the poem and I still haven't figured anything out, but at least I have a new poem out of it.

Sarah Kay

If you really want to torture me, sit me in a room strapped to a chair and put Mariah Carey's records on.

Cameron Diaz

Consider the social proof of a line of people standing behind a velvet rope, waiting to get into a club. The line makes most people walking by want to find out what's worth the wait. The digital equivalent of the velvet rope helped build viral growth for initially invite-only launches like Gmail, Gilt Groupe, Spotify, and Turntable.fm.