“There's something very authentic about humor, when you think about it....” — Billy Collins Quote

“There's something very authentic about humor, when you think about it. Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can't pretend to be funny.”

“I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue.”

“People think of poetry as a school subject... Poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover.”

“My family was all born in Sicily and I'm Italian-American. They're the real thing. They're authentic Italians, and honestly they're the most open-minded, nicest people in the world and nothing can really offend them. That's the way I think true Sicilians are.”

“I would rather write something that's authentic to me than something that'll be likely to get played on the radio but doesn't have any substance to it. People can see through that really quickly.”

“The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.”