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Bob Dylan Quotes
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Robert Dylan is an American singer, songwriter, musician, painter, and writer. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became a reluctant "voice of a generation" with songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", which became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement. Leaving behind his initial base in the American folk music revival, his six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone", recorded in 1965, enlarged the range of popular music.

Dylan's lyrics incorporate a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning more than 50 years, has explored the traditions in American song—from folk, blues, and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and the Great American Songbook. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but his songwriting is considered his greatest contribution. Since 1994, Dylan has also published seven books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries.

As a musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has also received numerous awards including eleven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." In May 2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

✵ 24. May 1941   •   Other names بوب ديلون
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Bob Dylan Quotes

“The old Rounder in the iron mask slipped me the master key, somebody had to unlock your heart, he said it was up to me.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Biograph (1985), Up to Me (recorded 1974)

Heart

“[Recounting a scene in The Gunfighter] Turn him loose, let him go, let him say he outdrew me fair and square — I want him to feel what it's like to every moment face his death.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Brownsville Girl (with Sam Shepard)

Death , Feeling

“It wasn't money or love that I was looking for. I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot. My mind was strong like a trap and I didn't need any guarantee of validity.”

Bob Dylan

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 9

Love , Money , Way , Sense

“And if I don't make it, you know my baby will.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry

Baby

“I believe in you even on the morning after.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), I Believe in You

“But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), With God On Our Side

God , Thinking

“If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Empire Burlesque (1985), Trust Yourself

“She could take the dark out the nighttime and paint the daytime black.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), She Belongs to Me

Painting

“All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight.
I gagged twice, doubled, tears blinding my sight.
My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night
Leaving all of love's ashes behind me.
The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet.
The words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet.
I think of her often and hope whoever she's met
Will be fully aware of how precious she is.
Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me,
"How good, how good does it feel to be free?"”

Bob Dylan

And I answer them most mysteriously,
"Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"
Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Ballad In Plain D

Love , Hope , Feeling , Bird

“You put your eyes in your pockets and your nose on the ground.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Ballad of a Thin Man

“And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Thinking

“But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

“Come all without, come all within,
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Self Portrait (1970), Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)

“Somebody got lucky, but it was an accident.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Pledging My Time

“I kinda live where I find myself.”

Bob Dylan

The Rolling Stone Interview: Bob Dylan http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-rolling-stone-interview-bob-dylan-19840621 (21 June 1984)

“A lot of people don't have much food on their table
But they got a lot of forks and knives
And they gotta cut something”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bob Dylan (1962), Talking New York

People , Food

“Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, they're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Like a Rolling Stone

People , Princess

“You can have your cake and eat it, too.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Nashville Skyline (1969), Lay Lady Lay

Beauty , Relationship

“Took a stranger to teach me to look into justice's beautiful face, and to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), I and I

Justice , Beauty

“Oh God said to Abraham, Kill me a son.
Abe says, Man, you must be puttin' me on.
God say, No. Abe say, What?
God say, You can do what you want Abe, but
the next time you see me comin' you better run.
Well Abe says, Where do you want this killin' done?
God says, Out on Highway 61.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Highway 61 Revisited

God , Time

“They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Sweetheart Like You

“Time is a jetplane — it moves too fast. Oh but what a shame that all we've shared can't last…”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), You're a Big Girl Now

Time

“Yonder stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Sun , Cry

“I met a white man who walked a black dog.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Dogs

“And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers…”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Desolation Row

Flowers , Fight

“The first two lines, which rhymed 'kiddin' you' and 'didn't you,' just about knocked me out, and later on, when I got to the jugglers and the chrome horse and the princess on the steeple, it all just about got to be too much.”

Bob Dylan

Discussing the song "Like a Rolling Stone" in Rolling Stone magazine (1988)

Horse , Princess

“There's lots of pretty girls in Mozambique.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Desire (1976), Mozambique

Girl

“Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

God , Color , Christ

“I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Shot of Love (1981), Every Grain Of Sand
Variant: "I am hanging in the balance of a perfect, finished plan" (The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1–3)

Reality

“But I would not feel so all alone, everybody must get stoned!”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

Feeling

“You see, you're just like me. I hope you're satisfied.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

Hope

“Everything passes
Everything changes
Just do what you think you should do
And someday maybe
Who knows, baby
I'll come and be cryin' to you”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), To Ramona

Thinking , Change , Baby

“It was gravity which pulled us in and destiny which broke us apart”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Idiot Wind

“I'm not sorry for nothin' I've done
I'm glad I fought—I only wish we'd won”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Honest with Me

“And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Visions of Johanna

“I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn't have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I'm sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: "Who're the right actors for these roles?" "How should this be staged?" "Do I really want to set this in Denmark?" His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. "Is the financing in place?" "Are there enough good seats for my patrons?" "Where am I going to get a human skull?"”

Bob Dylan

I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare's mind was the question "Is this literature?"
Nobel Banquet Speech

Literature , Question , Thinking , Reading

“They talk about a life of brotherly love? Show me someone who knows how to live it.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), Slow Train

Love , Life

“How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see?”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Blowin' in the Wind

Time

“When I saw you break down in front of the judge and cry real tears, it was the best damn thing I saw anybody do.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Brownsville Girl (with Sam Shepard)

Tear , Cry

“(Alternate version.) A brave man will kill you with a sword, a coward with a kiss.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), Gonna Change My Way of Thinking

Kiss

“Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard up for cash
They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash
To an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan
Who for reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 (1988), Tweeter and the Monkey Man

Love , Sister , Night

“You don't count the dead When God's on your side”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), With God On Our Side
Variant: You never ask questions When God's on your side

God , Dead

“The whole world's a bottle, And life's but a dram, When the bottle gets empty, It sure ain't worth a damn.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 (1991), Moonshiner (recorded 1963)

Life , World

“You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Jokerman

“I kiss good-bye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Idiot Wind

Kiss

“Oh Mama, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again?”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

“Oh, but if I had the stars from the darkest night
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean
I'd forsake them all for your sweet kiss
For that's all I'm wishin' to be ownin.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin (1964), Boots of Spanish Leather

Star , Kiss , Night

“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I'd have about the same odds as standing on the moon.”

Bob Dylan

Nobel Banquet Speech

Thinking , Chance

“If I thought about it, I never would have done it, I guess I would have let it slide.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Biograph (1985), Up to Me (recorded 1974)

“I didn't go to classes. I just didn't feel like it.”

Bob Dylan

No Direction Home (2005)

Feeling