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

I’ve rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

I don’t know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I personally do not think I’m a great gift to the world. I’ve been very fortunate.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

I will be unhappy if I know I have not accomplished something I should have done that was possible.

I am in my own head most of the time.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you.

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

The stores and the things like that, the business side of things came out at the point when, I’d say probably in the early ’70s, it looked like the year of the singer-songwriter was over, ‚cause music changed in our time and the spotlight was out.

Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

I really have no interest in myself.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

When I listen to the radio, I just hear so much music that doesn’t even sound like people. The vocals are all tuned, and the drums are all fake.

You go to a festival, you know you’re not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I’ve made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

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

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

People like to blame others. I think a person should just look at their own situation, look around them, find out what they wish to do, and seek and go and do that. And that’s it.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I’d go back to Virginia.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

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

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.