If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
Billy Collins writes lovely poems. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides.
Interpretation
Billy Collinsβ poetry captures the beauty of the world in unexpected ways.
This quote by John Updike highlights the unique qualities of Billy Collins' poetry, describing it as both beautiful and insightful. It emphasizes the ability of Collins' work to explore various dimensions of reality, making readers reconsider what they perceive and embrace the richness of existence through a fresh lens.
In practice
This quote can be used in a literary class to discuss the impact of poetry on perception.
If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. _x000D_ _x000D_ Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.
But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante.
I refuse to go onstage without looking into the eyes and touching everyone I'm working with... we're all in it together, and everyone's an equal part when we're onstage.
The art, the greatness of the music, the experience of the music is what I'm about. I think most African artists have destroyed their artistry by commercialization, and I don't want to belong to that bag.
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.