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Bob Dylan
444 quotes
“It's not a character like in a book or a movie. He's not a bus driver. He doesn't drive a forklift. He's not a serial killer. It's me who's singing that, plain and simple. We shouldn't confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, “My character this, and my character that.” Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don't have to explain it to me.”
“It's peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cellphones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It's a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that's got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.”
Bob Dylan (born 1941) first seen 1078 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rolling Stone #1078 (14 May 2009), p. 45
“The people in my songs are all me.”
Bob Dylan (born 1941) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bob Dylan Sounds Off On The Origin Of His New Record, Parlor Music, Dr. Dre, And Who His Songs Are About", Huffington Post (20 May 2009)
“It wasn't money or love that I was looking for. I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot. My mind was strong like a trap and I didn't need any guarantee of validity.”
“I was heading for the fantastic lights. No doubt about it. Could it be that I was being deceived? Not likely. I don't think I had enough imagination to be deceived; had no false hope, either. I'd come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.”
“Morality has nothing in common with politics.”
“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.”
“Opportunities may come along for you to convert something—something that exists into something that didn't yet.”
“America was changing. I had a feeling of destiny and I was riding the changes... My consciousness was beginning to change, too, change and stretch.”
“I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses.”
“I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of.”
“I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. I'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion.”
“Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true. Then again, at the same time, you're thinking that the only truth on earth is that there is no truth on it. Whatever you are saying, you're saying in a ricky-tick way. There's never time to reflect. You stitched and pressed and packed and drove, is what you did.”
“I put one on the turntable and when the needle dropped, I was stunned — didn't know if I was stoned or straight... All these songs together, one after another made my head spin. It made me want to gasp. It was like the land parted.”
“[Ref Rimbaud line 'Je est un autre,]' “which translates into ‘I is someone else.’ When I read those words the bells went off. It made perfect sense. I wished someone would have mentioned that to me earlier.”
“The road out would be treacherous, and I didn’t know where it would lead but I followed it anyway. It was a strange world ahead that would unfold, a thunderhead of a world with jagged lightning edges. Many got it wrong and never did get it right. I went straight into it. It was wide open. One thing for sure, not only was it not run by God, but it wasn’t run by the devil either.”
“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I'd have about the same odds as standing on the moon.”
“As a performer I've played for 50,000 people and I've played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried.”
“Like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years. Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?" So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.”
“You sound like a hillbilly; We want folk singers here.”
“A lot of people don't have much food on their table But they got a lot of forks and knives And they gotta cut something”
“I'm out here a thousand miles from my home Walkin' a road other men have gone down I'm seein' your world of people and things Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings”
“Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song, 'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born”
“Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Lead Belly too An' to all the good people that traveled with you Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men That come with the dust and are gone with the wind”
“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?”
“Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?”
“How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see?”
“How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?”
“Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”
“The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.”
“So if you're travelin' in the north country fair, Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, Remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine.”
“But I see through your eyes”
“All the money you made will never buy back your soul.”
“You ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins.”
“There is one thing I know though I'm younger than you Even Jesus would not forgive what you do”
“And I hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand o'er your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead”
“Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one?”
“I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it.”
“I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.”
“I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.”
“I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'.”
“I met a white man who walked a black dog.”
“And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it.”
“But I'll know my song well before I start singin'.”
“It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.”
“It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe If you don't know by now”
“I once loved a woman, a child I am told I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul.”
“I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe Where I'm bound, I can't tell But goodbye's too good a word, babe So I'll just say fare thee well”
“I ain't saying you treated me unkind You could have done better but I don't mind You just kinda wasted my precious time But don't think twice, it's all right.”
“I got into the driver's seat and drove down 42nd Street in my Cadillac. Good car to drive after a war.”