Billy Collins

“A lot of my poems either have historical sequences or other kinds of chronological grids where I'm locating myself in time. I like to feel oriented, and I like to orient the reader at the beginning of a poem.”

“I'm not a claustrophobe, but you don't need to be to feel claustrophobic inside an MRI. It's like being buried alive.”

“Japan Today I pass the time reading a favorite haiku, saying the few words over and over. It feels like eating the same small, perfect grape again and again. I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room. I stand by the big silence of the piano and...”

“No one here likes a wet dog.”

“Now that I'm older, a real source of interest is the ages of the dead, the number; the day is off to an optimistic start when the departed are all older than I.”

“I'm easily frightened, and I've also come to realize that old Catholic guilt or remorse is easily stimulated.”