Bob Dylan Quotes

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down...

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

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.

The future for me is already a thing of the past -
You were my first love and you will be my last

I asked the guy who made the sound effects for the radio shows how he got the sound of the electric chair and he said it was bacon sizzling. What about broken bones? The guy took out a LifeSaver and crushed it between his teeth.

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

Scratch utters the lines: 'I know there is evil in the world - essential evil, not the opposite good or the defective of good but something to which good itself is an irrelevance - a fantasy. No one can live as long as I have, hear what I have heard and not know that. I know too - more precisely - I am ready to belive that there may be something in the world - someone, if you prefer - that purpose evil, that intends it... powerful nations suddenly, without occasion, without apparent cause... decay. Their children turn against them. Their women lose their sense of being a woman. Their families disintegrate.' From there on it only gets better

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)

Gentlemen, he said I don't need your organization, I've shined your shoes
I've moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning either get ready for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards Peace will come with tranquility and splendor on the wheels of fire
But will offer no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords

You have to be let alone to really accomplish anything.

I don't want to go to Italy no more, I don't want to go nowhere no more. You end up crashing in a private airplane, in the mountains of Tennessee... or Sicily...

Who am I helping, what am I breaking, what am I giving, what am I taking?

You can't be wise and in love at the same time.

Because Dickens and Dostoyevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind.