Bob Dylan Quotes

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

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

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

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It`s like going from nowhere to nowhere.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

Democracy don`t rule the world, You`d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that`s better left unsaid.

I don`t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Chaos is a friend of mine.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Just because you like my stuff doesn`t mean I owe you anything.

When I first heard (Elvis Presley`s) voice I just knew that I wasn`t going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

Those are songs from the Tree of Life. There`s no love on the Tree of Life. Love is on the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Good and Evil. So we have a lot of songs in popular music about love. Who needs them? Not you, not me. You can use love in a lot of ways in which it will come back to hurt you. Love is a democratic principle. It`s a Greek thing.

(from his acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys in 1991) Well, my daddy, he didn`t leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say, "Son," he said, "you know it`s possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you, and if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.

If I wasn`t Bob Dylan, I`d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

What good are fans? You can`t eat applause for breakfast. You can`t sleep with it.

(on a visit to Israel in the early 1970s) There was no great significance to that visit, but I`m interested in the fact that Jews are Semites, like Babylonians, Hittites, Arabs, Syrians, Ethiopians. But a Jew is different because a lot of people hate Jews. There`s something going on here that`s hard to explain.

Money doesn`t talk, it swears.

A poem is a naked person . . . Some people say that I am a poet.

I`ve never written a political song. Songs can`t save the world. I`ve gone through all that.

The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the "Blonde on Blonde" album. It`s that thin, that wild mercury sound. It`s metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up. That`s my particular sound. I haven`t been able to succeed in getting it all the time. Mostly I`ve been driving at a combination of guitar, harmonica and organ.

...You don`t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

(when asked what his songs are "about") Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about 11 or 12.

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don`t back down and don`t give up - then you`re going to mystify a lot of folks.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

(1966) It`s the thing to do, to tell all the teeny-boppers, "I dig The Beatles" and you sing a song like "Yesterday" or "Michelle". Hey, God knows, it`s such a cop-out, man, both of those songs. If you go into the Library of Congress, you`ll find stuff a lot better than that. There are millions of songs like "Michelle" or "Yesterday" written in Tin Pan Alley.

I`ve only written four songs in my whole life, but I`ve written those four songs a million times.

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

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.

I know there are groups at the top of the charts that are hailed as the saviors of rock `n` roll and all that, but they are amateurs. They don`t know where the music comes from . . . I wouldn`t even think about playing music if I was born in these times . . . I`d probably turn to something like mathematics. That would interest me. Architecture would interest me. Something like that.

Everything passes. Everything changes. Just do what you think you should do.

The radio makes hideous sounds.

I can move, and fake. I know some of the tricks and it all applies artistically, not politically or philosophically.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

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

People can learn everything about me through my songs, if they know where to look.

A lot of people can`t stand touring, but to me it`s like breathing. I do it because I`m driven to do it.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

(about Woody Guthrie) His influence on me was never in inflection or in voice. What drew me to was that hearing his voice, I could tell he was very lonesome, very alone and very lost in his time. That`s why I dug him.

They`d like to use my tunes for different beer companies and perfumes and automobiles. I get approached on all that stuff. But, shit, I didn`t write them for that reason. That`s never been my scene.

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It`s like going from nowhere to nowhere.

I`m speaking for all of us. I`m the spokesman for a generation.

(on his song "Everything Is Broken") Critics usually don`t like a song like this coming out of me because it didn`t seem to be autobiographical. Maybe not, but the stuff I write does come from an autobiographical place.

My childhood is so far away . . . it`s like I don`t even remember being a child. I think it was someone else who was a child.

You can`t be wise and in love at the same time.

When you ain`t got nothin`, you got nothin` to lose.

Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.

I accept chaos, I`m not sure whether it accepts me.

I say there`re no depressed words, just depressed minds.

If the point is sharp, and the arrow is swift, it can pierce through the dust no matter how thick.

Democracy don`t rule the world, You`d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that`s better left unsaid.

Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.

You don`t necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they`re poets. I don`t call myself a poet because I don`t like the word. I`m a trapeze artist.

(on the legendary Woodstock Festival) I didn`t want to be part of that thing. I liked the town. I felt they exploited the shit out of that, going up there and getting 15 million people all in the same spot. That don`t excite me. The flower generation - is that what it was? I wasn`t into that at all. I just thought it was a lot of kids out and around wearing flowers in their hair taking a lot of acid.

What the songwriter does is just connect the dots. The ends he sees and the ones given to him and he connects them.

A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I`ll die like a poet.

(on his hometown of Hibbing, MN) The town didn`t have a rabbi, and it was time for me to be bar mitzvahed. Suddenly a rabbi showed up under strange circumstances for only a year. He and his wife got off the bus in the middle of winter. He showed up just in time for me to learn this stuff. He was an old man from Brooklyn who had a white beard and wore a black hat and black clothes. They put him upstairs above the café, which was the local hangout. It was a rock and roll café where I used to hang out, too. I use to go up there every day to learn the stuff, either after school or after dinner. After studying with him an hour or so, I`d come down and boogie.

The bootleg records, those are outrageous. I mean, they have stuff you do in a phone booth. Like, nobody`s around. If you`re just sitting and strumming in a motel, you don`t think anybody`s there, you know . . . it`s like the phone is tapped and then it appears on a bootleg record. With a cover that`s got a picture of you taken from underneath your bed and it`s got a striptease-type title and it costs $30. Amazing. Then you wonder why most artists feel so paranoid.

I wasn`t a good husband . . . I don`t even know what a good husband is.

I think of myself as a song-and-dance man.

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.

Maybe in the `90s or possibly in the next century people will look upon the `80s as the age of masturbation, when it was taken to the limit; that might be all that`s going on right now in a big way.

Swallow your pride, you will not die, it`s not poison.

I don`t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there`s some kind of change.

(on why he renounced his faith in Christianity) Because I felt so damned guilty all the time.

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but to inspire them?

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn`t call himself a poet.

It rubs me the wrong way, a camera . . . It`s a frightening thing . . . Cameras make ghosts out of people.

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

You don`t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the `60s. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.

Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land, And don`t criticize What you can`t understand

Music can save people, but it can`t in the commercial way it`s being used. It`s just too much. It`s pollution.

In the dime stores and bus stations, People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, Draw conclusions on the wall

Come you masters of war

Blame it on a simple twist of fate.

even birds are chained to the skyway