Bob Dylan

In the dime stores and bus stations people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.

Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake.

Sleep is like a temporary death.

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

The people in my songs are all me.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

I'm not the kind of cat that's going to cut off an ear if I can't do something.

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

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that.

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.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible.

Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Life is sad, Life is a bust, All ya can do is do what you must.

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

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.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

Having these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way.

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

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

A lot of people can't stand touring but to me it's like breathing. I do it because I'm driven to do it.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet.

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

You call yourself what you want to call yourself.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

I'm inconsistent even to myself.

People have different emotional levels. Especially when you're young.

The radio makes hideous sounds.

If I wasn't Bob Dylan I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

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

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.

A lot of people don't like the road but it's as natural to me as breathing.

Money doesn't talk it swears.

I can't stand to see myself on television.

You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.

I'm mortified to be on the stage but then again it's the only place where I'm happy.

I'm just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon.

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

I have dined with kings I've been offered wings. And I've never been too impressed.

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else.

When you cease to exist then who will you blame?

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

Democracy don't rule the world You'd better get that in your head, This world is ruled by violence But I guess that's better left unsaid.

It's not easy to define poetry.

My range is limited.

It's hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

I kinda live where I find myself.

In ceremonies of the horsemen even the pawn must hold a grudge.

Chaos is a friend of mine.

Folk music is a bunch of fat people.

What good are fans? You can't eat applause for breakfast. You can't sleep with it.

I don't think I'm tangible to myself.

Nothing can affect my voice it's so bad.

I like America just as everybody else does. I love America I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

Look when I started out mainstream culture was Sinatra Perry Como Andy Williams Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course there's no fitting into it now.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

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

You can't do something forever.

You're going to die. You're going to be dead. It could be 20 years it could be tomorrow anytime. So am I. I mean we're just going to be gone. The world's going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

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.

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.

You can't be happy by doing something groovy.

I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking my voice changed... so drastically I couldn't believe it myself.

To live outside the law you must be honest.

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

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

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

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

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious, it's just that there's nothing absolutely nothing to be specific and obvious about.

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

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient then repent.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

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.

Well the future for me is already a thing of the past.

I say there're no depressed words just depressed minds.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

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

I'm speaking for all of us. I'm the spokesman for a generation.

I realize I don't do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

I really didn't consider myself happy or unhappy.

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

No one is free even the birds are chained to the sky.

All I can do is be me whoever that is.

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

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.

I'm sick of giving creeps money off my soul.

I can't act!

He not busy being born is busy dying.

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.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

There is nothing so stable as change.

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It's like going from nowhere to nowhere.

I don't think I've ever been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come.

Some formulas are too complex and I don't want anything to do with them.

I'm not a playwright.