Bob Dylan Quotes

We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it.

Oh, the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreamin'
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it's for real
The hour when the ship comes in

Then they'll raise their hands
Sayin' we'll meet all your demands
But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered
And like Pharaoh's tribe
They'll be drownded in the tide
And like Goliath, they'll be conquered

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

A saxophone someplace far off played / As she was walkin' on by the arcade / As the light burst through a beat-up shade where he was wakin' up / She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate / And forgot about a simple twist of fate

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses.

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

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

In the dime stores and bus stations
People talk of situations
Read books, repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall
Some speak of the future
My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all

-Bob Dylan, “Love Minus Zero / No Limit” (1965)

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

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go.
To the valley below.

[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.

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me
You'll never know the hurt I suffer nor the pain I rise above
And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or you kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry.

I wrote you a song about a funny old world that's coming along. It seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn. It looks like it's dying and it's hardly been born.

Then she says, You don't read women authors do ya? At least that's what I think I hear her say. Well, I said, how would you know and what would it matter anyway. Well, she says you just don't seem like you do. I said you're way wrong. She says which ones have you read then. I say I've read Erica Jong.