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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: 523   quotes 50   likes

Bob Dylan Quotes

“America was changing. I had a feeling of destiny and I was riding the changes… My consciousness was beginning to change, too, change and stretch.”

Bob Dylan

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 73

Feeling , Change

“Drinkin' man listens to the voice he hears,
In a crowded room full of covered up mirrors,
Lookin' into the lost forgotten years
For dignity”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume 3 (1994), Dignity

“Lay, lady, lay. Lay across my big, brass bed.”

Bob Dylan

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

“That ear - I mean, Jesus, he's got to will that to the Smithsonian.”

Bob Dylan

In reference to Brian Wilson, Newsweek (1997)

“You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
Your empty pockets tell yuh
That you ain’t a-got no friend”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), Ballad of Hollis Brown

“Yesterday's just a memory; tomorrow's never what it's supposed to be.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight

Memory

“I hate myself for loving you.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Planet Waves (1974), Dirge

Love , Hate

“Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than those who are most content.”

Bob Dylan

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

People , Suffering

“She knows too much to argue or to judge.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Love Minus Zero/No Limit

“I think it's the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. 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 I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.”

Bob Dylan

London Times interview http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6043331.ece (2009)

Love , Truth , Justice , Travel

“Well, I wanna be your lover, baby, I don't wanna be your boss.”

Bob Dylan

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

Lovers , Baby

“It's not to anybody's best interest to think about how they will be perceived tomorrow. It hurts you in the long run.”

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan: The Song Talk Interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/1991zollo.htm by Paul Zollo (1991)

Thinking , Hurt

“In the dark I hear the night birds call
I can feel a lover's breath
I sleep in the kitchen with my feet in the hall
Sleep is like a temporary death”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Modern Times (2006), Workingman's Blues #2

Death , Feeling , Lovers , Bird

“Come Congressmen, Senators, please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall
For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it's ragin’.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), The Times They Are A-Changin

Hurt

“You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn't enough to change my heart”

Bob Dylan

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

Change , Heart

“Don't turn away, you'll create sorrow,
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore,
You may not see me tomorrow.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Desire (1976), Oh, Sister

Time

“Feel as though my soul has turned into steel. I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Time Out of Mind (1997), Not Dark Yet

Feeling , Soul , Sun

“Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.”

Bob Dylan

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

Dead , Forgetting

“Have they counted the cost it'll take to bring down all the earthly principles they're gonna have to abandon?”

Bob Dylan

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

“Time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Empire Burlesque (1985), Dark Eyes

Passion , Time

“And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burnin' coal. Pourin' off of every page, like it was written in my soul from me to you…”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Tangled Up In Blue

Soul

“The book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Jokerman

Books , Law , Teachers , Sea

“All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me now…”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Tangled Up In Blue

People

“And here I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice.”

Bob Dylan

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

Waiting

“She takes just like a woman, yes she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Just Like A Woman

Love , Making love , Girl

“Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Lead Belly too
An' to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind”

Bob Dylan

Compare: "We come with the dust and we go with the wind." Woody Guthrie, Pastures of Plenty.
Song lyrics, Bob Dylan (1962), Song to Woody

Men , People , Travel , Heart

“Here's your throat back, thanks for the loan.”

Bob Dylan

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

“You'll never know the hurt I suffer, nor the pain I rise above, and I'll never know the same about you…”

Bob Dylan

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

Pain , Suffering , Hurt

“I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin.”

Bob Dylan

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

“I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.”

Bob Dylan

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

“Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him.”

Bob Dylan

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

“A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet. He'll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat, take the motherless children off the street and place them at the feet of a harlot.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Jokerman

Children , Birth

“How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?”

Bob Dylan

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

Time

“If there's anyone who knows, is there anyone who cares?”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), Ballad of Hollis Brown

“Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin (1964), The Times They Are A-Changin

Understanding , Daughters

“All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), All I Really Want To Do

Baby

“I got into the driver's seat and drove down 42nd Street in my Cadillac.
Good car to drive after a war.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Talkin' World War III Blues

War , Cars

“You never turned around to see the frowns, on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did, tricks for you.”

Bob Dylan

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

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

Bob Dylan

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

“Take me disappearing, through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time…”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man

Time

“My so-called friends have fallen under a spell: they look me squarely in the eye and say, "Well; all is well."”

Bob Dylan

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

“I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned slowly into autumn.”

Bob Dylan

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

Autumn , Tree , Waiting

“I always have respected her for doin' what she did and gettin' free”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), If You See Her, Say Hello

“Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can't sing, I call a poem.”

Bob Dylan

Liner notes https://bobdylan.com/albums/freewheelin-bob-dylan/, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)

Singing

“With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man

Fate , Memory , Forgetting

“Your lover who just walked out the door, has taken all his blankets from your floor.”

Bob Dylan

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

Lovers

“Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth, he can do with it as he please. And if things don't change soon, he will.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), License to Kill

Thinking , Change

“My patron saint is a-fighting with a ghost. He's always off somewhere when I need him most.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Biograph (1985), Abandoned Love (recorded 1975)

Fight

“If the songs are dreamed, it's like my voice is coming out of their dream.”

Bob Dylan

Quoted in Robert Shelton's No Direction Home (1986), p. 281

Dreams

“We're going all the way, till the wheels fall off and burn, till the sun peels the paint and the seat covers fade and the water moccasins die.”

Bob Dylan

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

Way , Water , Sun , Painting