Bob Dylan Quotes

I failed to communicate, that's why I chose to leave

Play it fuckin' loud!

I can see God in a daisy. I can see God at night in the wind and rain. I see Creation just about everywhere. The highest form of song is prayer. King David's, Solomon's, the wailing of a coyote, the rumble of the Earth.

People tell me it's a sinTo know and feel too much within

If you're not busy being born, you're busy dying.

Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you'd like to act.

It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be...

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic... whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambition to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk with.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

I’m happy to just be able to come across things. I don’t need to be happy. Happiness is a kind of cheap word. Let’s face it, I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something. I would commit suicide. I would shoot myself in the brain if things got bad. I would jump from a window…you know, I can think about death openly. It’s nothing to fear. It’s nothing sacred. I’ve seen so many people die. Life’s not sacred either

There must be some kind of way out of here,' said the joker to the thief...

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.

She's got everything she needs; she's an artist, she don't look back.

reality has too many heads

I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, "Running Scared," exploded into the room.Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.

My grandfather was a duck trapperHe could do it with just dragnets and ropesMy grandmother could sew new dresses out of old clothI don't know if they had any dreams or hopesI had 'em once though, I suppose, to go alongWith all the ring-dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas evesI left all my dreams and hopesBuried under tobacco leaves

Come writers and criticsWho prophesize with your penAnd keep your eyes wideThe chance won't come againAnd don't speak too soonFor the wheel's still in spinAnd there's no tellin' whoThat it's namin'For the loser nowWill be later to winFor the times they are a-changin'.

You're gonna have to serve somebody; well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody...

When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.

I had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren't for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren't friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn't come gently to the shore. I guess you could say they weren't commercial.Not only that, my style was too erratic and hard to pigeonhole for the radio, and songs, to me, were more important that just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic. Greil Marcus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call it "the invisible republic."Whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. i just thought of popular culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.I didn't know what age of history we were in nor what the truth of it was. Nobody bothered with that. If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs taught me that.

It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry

When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to loose.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.

It seemed I'd always been chasing after something, anything that moved -a car, a bird, a blowing leaf -anything that might lead me into some more lit place, some unknown land downriver. I had not even the vaguest notion of the broken world I was living in, what society could do with you.

...we are singing today of the WIPE-OUT GANG - the WIPE-OUT GANG buys, owns & operates the Insanity Factory - if you do not know where the Insanity Factory is located, you should hereby take two steps to the right, paint your teeth & go to sleep....

Privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back.

Thinking of a series of dreamsWhere the time and the tempo flyAnd there's no exit in any direction'Cept the one that you can't see with your eyes

The future for me is already a thing of the past -You were my first love and you will be my last

Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be.

If you're looking to get silly, you better go back to from where you came. because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.

I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours

Don't criticize what you can't understand.

Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it's available. When the cost comes down, look out!

What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening - all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn't one big joke.

why be bothered with other people's set-ups? it only leads to torture.

I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.

Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.

People are crazy and times are strangeI'm locked in tight, I'm out of rangeI used to care, but things have changed

Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game.

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting If I could hear his heart softly pounding Yes, and only if he was lying by me Would I lie in my bed once again.

Yes 'n' how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free? Yes. 'n' how many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind.

The dominant myth of the day seemed to be that anybody could do anything, even go to the moon. You could do whatever you wanted -in the ads and in the articles, ignore your limitations, defy them. If you were an indecisive person, you could become a leader and wear lederhosen. If you were a housewife, you could become a glamour girl with rhinestone sunglasses. Are you slow witted? No worries -you can be an intellectual genius. If you're old, you can be young. Anything was possible. It was almost like a war against the self.

They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.

I had no time for romance. I turned away from the window, from the wintry sun, crossed through the room, went to the stove and made and poured myself a cup of hot chocolate and then clicked on the radio

A poem is a naked person....Some people say that I am a poet.

Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want (Bob Dylan's dad)

Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Your heart is like the ocean, mysterious and dark.

And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.

Let me ask you one questionIs your money that goodWill it buy you forgivenessDo you think that it couldI think you will findWhen your death takes its tollAll the money you madeWill never buy back your soul

People talk about egos as if it were objects.

But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years.Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?"So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.

All I can be is me- whoever that is.

Yet there’s no one to beat you | No one t’ defeat you | ’Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad

How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man?

There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again.