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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 quotes51 likes

Bob Dylan Quotes

“He's following a star, the same one that the three men followed east.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Man of Peace

“May you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung. May your song always be sung, May you stay forever young.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Planet Waves (1974), Forever Young

“And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only”

Bob Dylan

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

“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

Nobel Banquet Speech

“As a performer I've played for 50,000 people and I've played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried.”

Bob Dylan

Nobel Banquet Speech

“You've been with the professors and they've all liked your looks. With great lawyers you've discussed lepers and crooks.”

Bob Dylan

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

“If your mem'ry serves you well, we were gonna meet again and wait, so I think I'll just unpack my bags and sit before it gets too late.
No man alive will come to you with another tale to tell, but you know that we shall meet again, if your mem'ry serves you well.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Basement Tapes (1975), This Wheel's on Fire (recorded in 1967)

“I think what I need might be a full-length leather coat
Somebody just asked me
If I registered to vote”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Time Out of Mind (1997), Highlands

“Well, it's sugar for sugar
And salt for salt
If you go down in the flood
It's gonna be your own fault”

Bob Dylan

Compare: "I give you sugar for sugar, but all you want is salt for salt/ Well if you can't get along with me, then it's your own fault." Richard Brown, James Alley Blues.
Song lyrics, The Basement Tapes (1975), Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood) (recorded 1967)

“Jan had told him many times "it was you to me who taught:
in Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught"”

Bob Dylan

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

“His clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean, and you're the best thing that he's ever seen.”

Bob Dylan

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

“Lord knows I've paid some dues gettin' through…”

Bob Dylan

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

“Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I've forgotten her don't tell her it isn't so.”

Bob Dylan

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

“A lot of people complaining that there is no work. I say, "Why you say that for?" When nothin' you got is US-made — they don't make nothin' here no more.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Union Sundown

“I can't believe we've lived so long and are still so far apart.”

Bob Dylan

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

“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?”

Bob Dylan

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

“Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend
Be it mine right or wrongfully
I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends
To tie up the time most forcefully”

Bob Dylan

Compare: "Of all the money e'er I had, I spent it in good company. And all the harm e'er I've done, Alas! it was to none but me." The Parting Glass.
Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), Restless Farewell

“And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul
To the old folks home and the college”

Bob Dylan

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

“But my heart is not weary; it's light and it's free
I've got nothing but affection for those who've sailed with me.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Mississippi

“I didn't know whether to duck or to run, so I ran.”

Bob Dylan

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

“Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Man of Peace

“Far between sundown’s finish an’ midnight’s broken toll,
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing.
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds,
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing.
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight,
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight,
An’ for each an’ ev’ry underdog soldier in the night,
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Chimes of Freedom

“I paid the price of solitude but at least I'm out of debt.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Planet Waves (1974), Dirge

“I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. I'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion.”

Bob Dylan

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 147

“Morality has nothing in common with politics.”

Bob Dylan

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 45

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

Bob Dylan

Playboy Interview (February 1966)

“Truth is an arrow, and the gate is narrow that it passes through.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), When He Returns

“Love is all there is, it makes the world go 'round
Love and only love, it can’t be denied
No matter what you think about it
You just won’t be able to do without it
Take a tip from one who's tried”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Nashville Skyline (1969), I Threw It All Away

“The one was Texas medicine. the other was just railroad gin. And, like a fool, I mixed them and it strangled up my mind and now people just get uglier and I have no sense of time.”

Bob Dylan

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

“When I first heard Elvis's voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. He is the deity supreme of rock and roll religion as it exists in today's form. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. I think for a long time that freedom to me was Elvis singing 'Blue Moon of Kentucky.”

Bob Dylan

I thank God for Elvis.
US magazine (24 August 1987); on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, as reported in Bob Dylan: Performing Artist 1986–1990 and Beyond, Mind out of Time (2009)

“A woman like you should be at home. That's where you belong, taking care of somebody nice who don't know how to do you wrong.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Sweetheart Like You

“I like to do just like the rest,
I like my sugar sweet, but guarding fumes and making haste,
it ain't my cup of meat.”

Bob Dylan

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

“I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of.”

Bob Dylan

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 115

“It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), I Shall Be Free No. 10

“The pump don't work
'Cause the vandals took the handles”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Subterranean Homesick Blues

“You will start out standing, proud to steal her anything she sees, but you will wind up peeking through her keyhole down upon your knees.”

Bob Dylan

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

“Bob Dylan: The media is all-pervasive. What can a writer think of to write that you don't see every day in a newspaper or on television?
Interviewer: …Do you think that TV and the media have killed poetry and literature?
Bob Dylan: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. … What's a writer to do if every idea is exposed in the media before he can get to it or let it evolve? What's a writer gonna write about? … We're living in a science-fiction world. We're living in a world that Disney has conquered. Disney's science fiction. Theme parks, trendy streets, it's all science fiction. So I would say, if a writer has got something to say, he'll have to do it in that–
Interviewer: Outside of the real world?
Bob Dylan: There is a real world. Science fiction has become the real world. Whether we realize it or not, it has.”

Bob Dylan

The Rome Press Conference (23 July 2001)

“The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face.”

Bob Dylan

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

“You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ear to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you”

Bob Dylan

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

“She left one too many a boy behind
He committed suicide”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 (2010), Gypsy Lou (recorded 1963)

“And if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme…”

Bob Dylan

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

“We may not be able to defeat these swine, but we don't have to join them.”

Bob Dylan

As quoted in Kingdom of Fear (2003) by Hunter S. Thompson

“A change in the weather is known to be extreme; but what's the sense in changing horses in mid-stream?”

Bob Dylan

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

“Drownin' in the poison, got not future got no past.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Mississippi

“The ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.”

Bob Dylan

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

“I had to say something to strike him very weird so I yelled out "I like Fidel Castro and his beard."”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Motorpsycho Nightmare

“Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail,
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder,
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind,
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind,
An’ the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Chimes of Freedom

“Some one else is speaking with my mouth, but I'm listening only to my heart.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), I and I

“It's sundown on the union that was made in the USA. Sure was a good idea till greed got in the way.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Union Sundown

“I helped her out of a jam, I guess, but I used a little too much force…”

Bob Dylan

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