Lindsay

“It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.”
― Billy Collins

“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, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
― Beverly Sills

“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero