But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

I’ve lived a very colorful life, and I’ve said some things, But not once have I taken them back, and I’ve never apologized for them – and I won’t.

Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

A man’s own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

The most common criticism I get is that I’m being manipulated and you shouldn’t use children in political ways, because that is abuse, and I can’t think for myself and so on. And I think that is so annoying! I’m also allowed to have a say – why shouldn’t I be able to form my own opinion and try to change people’s minds?

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Let us ask ourselves, ‚What kind of people do we think we are?‘ And let us answer, ‚Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.‘

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.