Bob Dylan Quotes

You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live ...

I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans.

God bless you all with peace, tranquility and good will.

I just try to understand that tomorrow is another day.

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

I thought that he was righteous, but he's vain. Oh, somethings a telling me I wear the ball and chain.

Anger and jealousy's all that he sells us, he's content when you're under his thumb. Madmen oppose him, but your kindness throws him, to survive it you play deaf and dumb.

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way.

You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books, you're very well read, it's well known.

Too much information about nothing.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

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

All that foreign oil controlling American soil.

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear his heart softly pounding
Yes, and only if he was lying by me
Would I lie in my bed once again.

Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast

The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handle

Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift - look out out kid, they keep it all hid

The only person you have to think about lying twice to is either yourself or to God. The press isn't either of them. And I just figured they're irrelevant.

My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip, my toes to numb to step, wait only for my boot heels to be wandering.

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.

All I can do is be me. Whoever that is.

If you choose to live outside the law, you must obey the law more stringently than anyone.

He swift don't win the race. It goes to the worthy, who can divide the word of truth.

Too much of nothing, it just makes a fellow mean.

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.

A noble truth is a sacred creed.

I need all kinds of songs - fast ones, slow ones, minor key, ballads, rumbas - and they all get juggled around during a live show. I've been trying for years to come up with songs that have the feeling of a Shakespearean drama, so I'm always starting with that.

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.

The rocks on the sand will proudly stand
The hour that the ship comes in.

What politics I ever learned, I learned in the streets, because it was part of the environment.

It will scramble your head and drag your brain about, sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out.

For the loser now
Will be later to win

And it's a hard, It's a hard, It's a hard, It's a hard, It's a hard rain gonna fall.

What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening - all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn't one big joke.

Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism, fools making laws for the breaking of jaws.

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.

The drunken politician leaps upon the street where mothers weep, and the saviors who are fast asleep, they wait for you.

So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away, to the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong.

You been down to the bottom with a bad man, babe
But you're back were you belong

Don't know which one is worse, doing your own thing or just being cool.

The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles.

There's beauty in the silver singing river There's beauty in the sunrise in the sky But none of these and nothing else can match the beauty That I remember in my true love's eyes

The times are a-changing and if we don't we will sink like a stone.

Who Killed Davey Moore? Why and what's the reason for?

They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.

It ain't where you're from, its where you're going to

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs had taught me that.

I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Duke of Disobedience, Leader of the Freeloaders, Kaiser of Apostasy, Archbishop of Anarchy, the Big Cheese. Horrible titles any way you want to look at it. All code words for Outlaw.

Nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street.

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face

Every man's conscience is vile and depraved / You cannot depend on it to be your guide when it's you who must keep it satisfied.

I've never gone for having a great voice, for cultivating one. I'm still not doing it now.

Don't Ask Me Nothing About Nothing,
I Just Might Tell You the Truth

So happy just to be alive,
Underneath the sky of blue,
On this new morning, new morning,
On this new morning with you.

Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want (Bob Dylan's dad)

You can't do something forever.

People tell me it's a sin, to know and feel too much within.

Oh you five and ten cent women
With nothin' in your heads
I got a real gal I'm lovin'
And Lord I'll love her till I'm dead
Go away from my door and my window too
Right now

Can't keep track of it no more, son's becoming husbands to their mothers, and old men turning your daughters into whores.

Yet there's no one to beat you | No one t' defeat you | 'Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad

There's a black Mercedes rollin' through the combat zone
Your servants are half dead; you're down to the bone
Tell me, tall man, where would you like to be overthrown
Maybe down in Jerusalem or Argentina?
Angelina

I dug it, New York City, all-the streets and the snows and the starving and the five-flight walkups and sleeping in rooms with ten people. I dug the trains and the shadows, the way I dug ore mines and coal mines. I just jumped right to the bottom of New York.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am ...

I ain't saying you treated me unkind you could've done better, but I don't mind. You just kinda wasted my precious time. But don't think twice, it's alright.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged,
It's only people's games that you got to dodge.
From It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

My love is like some raven at my window with a broken wing.

I don't believe you. You're a liar. Play it fucking loud!

I never could guess your weight, baby.

Come Senators, Congressman, please heed the call, don't stand in the doorway, don't block the hall.

It's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you.

You have to look at every one of your songs and be able to identify with them in a meaningful way. You can hardly sing your songs unless you're in them. If you want to fake it, go ahead. Fake it if you want. But I'm not that kind of singer.

It ain't my cup of meat.

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

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody's always sinking.

So, I don't know. I think so. It's all in the heart, whatever keeps you that way. Keeps you forever young. Forever young doesn't necessarily mean that you don't grow old, but you just have some contact with what put you where you are. You know, keep some type of contact. Anyway ...

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

Uncle fought in Vietnam and then he fought a war all by himself.

Folk music is a bunch of fat people.

Nothing is better, nothing is best, take heed of this and get plenty of rest.

Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies.

Shakespeare's last play was called The Tempest. It wasn't called just plain Tempest. The name of my record is just plain Tempest. It's two different titles,

Lay down the song you strum,
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum.

We're living in times where men commit crimes and crime don't have a face.

I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound. Someone's always yellin', 'Turn him down'."
"Highlands" from "Time Out of Mind" (1997)

Once upon a time You dressed so fine

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.

I don't need your organization, I've moved your mountains and I've marked you cards, but Eden is burning. You better get ready for elimination or else your hearts must have the courage of the changing of the guard.

Get jailed, jump bail, join the Army if you fail.

I could say that I'd be faithful- I could say it one sweet, easy breath, but to you that would be cruelty and to me it surely would be death.

Well, I sing by night, wander by day. I'm on the road and it looks like I'm here to stay.

You're better than no one and no one is better than you.

I put one on the turntable and when the needle dropped, I was stunned - didn't know whether I was stoned or straight.

I'll be selling tickets for my next tour exclusively through Jonah Lehrer. Make sure to pay cash.

Folk songs are evasive-the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn't be comfortable with it any other way. A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who's playing and who's listening.

I could stay with you forever and never realize the time.

The picture you have in your mind of what you're about will come true.

I'm just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon.

She takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon.

I said, you know they refused Jesus, too. He said, you're not him.