Bob Dylan Quotes

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.

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

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

Nothing can affect my voice, it’s so bad.

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.

I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

The radio makes hideous sounds.

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

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

I can’t act!

It’s not easy to define poetry.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

It’s hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

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

I really didn’t consider myself happy or unhappy.

I don’t think I’ve ever been an agnostic. I’ve always thought there’s a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there’s a world to come.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

My range is limited.

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

I’m sick of giving creeps money off my soul.

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

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

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past – whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

You call yourself what you want to call yourself.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

I’m not a playwright.

The people in my songs are all me.

I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

A lot of people don’t like the road, but it’s as natural to me as breathing.

Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there’s no fitting into it now.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

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

I can’t stand to see myself on television.

I realize I don’t do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

There is nothing so stable as change.

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

People have different emotional levels. Especially when you’re young.

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

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

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

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.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

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

Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking, my voice changed… so drastically, I couldn’t believe it myself.

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

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

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.

A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.