Quotes From "The Apple That Astonished Paris" By Billy Collins

Though they know in their adult hearts, even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bedfor his appalling behavior, that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids, their wives are Dopey Dopeheadsand that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants. Billy Collins

The fly lands on the swatter. The movie runs backwardsand catches fire in the projector. This species apes us wellby talking only about itself Billy Collins

These days every morning begins like a joke you think you have heard before, but there is no one telling it whom you can stop. One day it's about a cow who walks into a bar, then about a man with a big nose on his honeymoon, then about a kangaroo who walks into a bar. Each one takes up an entire day. The sun looks like a prank Nathanael West is pulling on the world; on the drive to work cars are swinging comically from lane to lane. The houses and lawns belong in cartoons. The hours collapse into one another's arms. The stories arc over noon and descend like slow ferris wheels into the haze of evening. You wish you could stop listening and get serious. Trouble is you cannot remember the punch line which never arrives till very late at night, just as you are reaching for the bedside lamp, just before you begin laughing in the dark. Billy Collins

When i believe in everything, I could not seethe actors semicircled around a studio microphoneflipping the pages of scripts in unison. I only heard the voices, resonant, electric, adult, accusing each other of murder. Billy Collins

A long time ago when cataclysms were commonas sneezes and land masses slidaround the globe looking for placesto settle down and become continents, someone introduced us at a party. Billy Collins

There are easier ways of making sense, the connoisseurship of gesture, for example. You hold a girl's face in your hands like a vase. You lift a gun from the glove compartmentand toss it out the window into the desert heat. Billy Collins