103 Quotes & Sayings By Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

...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.... Bob Dylan

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 Bob Dylan

Look, you know i don't wanna come on ungrateful, but that warren report, you know as well as me, just didn't make it. You know, like they might as well have asked some banana salesman from des moines, who was up in toronto on the big day, if he saw anyone around looking suspicious/... Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul Bob Dylan

The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The new order is Rapidly fadin'. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'. Bob Dylan

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There's a battle outside ragin'. It'll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'. Bob Dylan

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

Play it fuckin' loud! Bob Dylan

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

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

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

Thinking of a series of dreams Where the time and the tempo fly And there's no exit in any direction' Cept the one that you can't see with your eyes Bob Dylan

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

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. . Bob Dylan

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

Reality has too many heads Bob Dylan

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

Your heart is like the ocean, mysterious and dark. Bob Dylan

I wasn't going to go deeper into the darkness for anybody. I was already living in the darkness. My family was my light and I was going to protect that light at all cost. That was where my dedication was, first, last and everything in-between. What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Bob Dylan

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

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. Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about WILL COME TRUE. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside. Bob Dylan

Inside the museums, | Infinity goes up on trial | Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

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

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

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 . Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

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

And if you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you. Bob Dylan

People are crazy and times are strange I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range I used to care, but things have changed Bob Dylan

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

Be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want." -Bob Dylan's Dad Bob Dylan

Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin' For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'. Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

People talk about egos as if it were objects. Bob Dylan

My grandfather was a duck trapper He could do it with just dragnets and ropes My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth I don't know if they had any dreams or hopes I had 'em once though, I suppose, to go along With all the ring-dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas eves I left all my dreams and hopes Buried under tobacco leaves Bob Dylan

Don't criticize what you can't understand. Bob Dylan

People are crazy and times are strange, I'm locked in tight I'm out of range, I use to carebut things have changed. Bob Dylan

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

Once upon a time You dressed so fine Bob Dylan

..my father was the best man in the world and probably worth a hundred of me, but he didn't understand me. The town he lived in and the town I lived in were not the same. Bob Dylan

Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot. Bob Dylan

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

No martyr is among ye now | Whom you can call your own | So go on your way accordingly | But know you’re not alone. Bob Dylan

Beauty walks a razors edge, someday I'll make it mine. Bob Dylan

Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift - look out out kid, they keep it all hid Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

I never took much, I never asked for your crutch, Now don't ask for mine. Bob Dylan

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. Bob Dylan

New York was a city where you could be frozen to death in the midst of a busy street and nobody would notice. Bob Dylan

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

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. Bob Dylan

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

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

I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay. Bob Dylan

You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary. Bob Dylan

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die. Bob Dylan

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas. Bob Dylan

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway. Bob Dylan

What's money? 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. Bob Dylan

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work. Bob Dylan

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie. Bob Dylan

The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots. Bob Dylan

Don't matter how much money you got, there's only two kinds of people: there's saved people and there's lost people. Bob Dylan

Money doesn't talk, it swears. Bob Dylan

I'm more of an adventurous type than a relationship type. Bob Dylan

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet. Bob Dylan

It's not easy to define poetry. Bob Dylan

There is nothing so stable as change. Bob Dylan

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. Bob Dylan

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change. Bob Dylan

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn't possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world. Bob Dylan