If an artist is driven primarily by social responsibility, I think the art probably suffers because, again, just as leadership has a rather defined end point or purpose, social responsibility would seem to have a very clear moral context.

— Billy Collins

I find a lot of poetry very disappointing, but I do have poets that I go back to. One book of poetry that I'd like to mention is 'The Exchange' by Sophie Cabot Black. Her poems are difficult without being too difficult.

— Billy Collins

If you look a word up in the dictionary and twenty minutes later you're still wandering around in the dictionary, you probably have the most basic equipment you need to be a poet.

— Billy Collins

I have my Poetry 180 project, which I've made my main project. We encourage high schools, because that's really where, for most people, poetry dies off and gets buried under other adolescent pursuits.

— Billy Collins

I know my voice has a limited range of motion; I don't write dramatic monologues and pretend to be other people. But so far, my voice is broad enough to accommodate most of what I want to put into my poetry. I like my persona; I often wish I were him and not me.

— Billy Collins

I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.

— Billy Collins

I'm a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I'd rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.

— Billy Collins

I'm all for poetry catching up with technology, and just as there are iTunes, I think we should have poems. I mean, people should be able to walk around with their earbuds in and listening to poems on their iPod.

— Billy Collins

I'm happy to stick with my persona. There are themes of love lost and love regained, but the main themes of all poems are basically love and death, and that seems to be the message of poetry.

— Billy Collins

I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes.

— Billy Collins