Dylan Quotes

I don't know if music has ever achieved anything past appealing to the people that it appeals to. If a song could stop a war, then Bob Marley and Bob Dylan songs would have stopped one or two.

But can a song stop a war? If Bob Marley and Bob Dylan couldn't do it, it can't be done.

I have three dads: my biological father, God and Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan led me to this kind of music - and it's his and ours. And it's nobody else's.

To us, there was Bob Dylan, and there was dad. As for what he meant to other people, that was never glorified in our house. There were no accolades there, no gold records.

I moved to leave, and Dylan actually grabbed me by my shoulders. I was so surprised that I forgot to karate-chop his elbows and break his arms.

Now that we were alone,i was self-conscious and cranky again.Why had i wanted to stay?if i had been programmed to want to be with dylan,heads were gonna roll,i promise you that.

I started writing when I was 17. I got an acoustic guitar for my birthday after I discovered Bob Dylan and James Taylor.

[Bob] Dylan is a contemporary Don Quixote, at once besotted by the promise of America and yet also undermining it.

In the meantime [1963-65], [Bob] Dylan was writing some of the best love songs in the genre, like "Girl From the North Country," "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," and "It Ain't Me, Babe."

Folk music had long been political but [Bob] Dylan's poetry took it to a new level.

In late [Bob] Dylan, music is the key to immortality, even though the summer days are long gone.

More of the symbols are stock (does [Bob] Dylan really have hogs lying out in the mud somewhere? I doubt it), but that's the point.

[Bob Dylan] is a preacher but also a sinner; a poet but also a pitchman; authentic all-American but also invented persona.

[Bob] Dylan, like Johnny Cash and only a handful of others, simultaneously embodies the American dream and the harsh wake-up call that comes after it.

Except in these latter-day songs, [Bob] Dylan is a grizzled old prophet who's already been to hell and back.

The best songs of this [modern] period - the apocalyptic "High Water," for example - return [Bob] Dylan to where he was in his first phase, updating and transforming American traditional music.

[Bob] Dylan would cut out phrases from magazines and then paste them together.

While [Bob] Dylan's folk fans thought he was selling out [in 1965-67], actually Dylan was lodging a stronger, deeper critique of American hypocrisy.

I can't write story-songs, like I couldn't write a Bob Dylan or Tom Waits song. I can only write whatever weird phrases come into my head, and hope that they're good.

As a bit of loner, prone to melancholy, with a questionable sexuality, I found great solace in the words of-Dylan, Joni, John Prine and Leonard Cohen. The darker the better.

Dylan Jerome," the lawyer admits, "wanted to sue God for not caring enough about him.

I didn't come after Elvis and Dylan, I've been around always. But if I see or meet a great artist, I love 'em.

I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after Highway 64 (sic) and Blonde on Blonde, and even then it was because George (Harrison) would sit me down and make me listen.

I started being me about the songs, not writing objectively, but subjectively. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.

Most of the songs came from Europe and Africa and now they were coming back to us. Many of [Bob] Dylan's best songs came from Scotland, Ireland or England. It was a sort of cultural exchange.

The early Bob Dylan was compulsively drawn to the conflict between stability and the search for immortality.

Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.

My musical tastes go from Zeppelin to Bob Dylan to Kanye West and Lil' Wayne. Anything modern and progressive.

Joaquin Sabina is one of my favorites. He's like a legend. He's like our Bob Dylan, or our Bruce Springsteen. He's one of the most talented writers of our Latin music.

I don't think I have any right to say I belong to that [Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan tradition]. I think that's something that eventually maybe you get inducted into. I'm just experimenting.

I heard Pete Seeger records when I was a kid. I saw Bob Dylan when I was about 12. The first song I ever learned to play was a song by Phil Ochs.

I won't comment on what Bob Dylan said, but I will comment on his receiving the Nobel Prize, which to me is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.

If it works for the piece of music, I'm going to use it. I don't want to be limited any more than [Bob] Dylan wanted to be limited by not using an electric guitar.

I always want to keep things unwritten. I'm inspired by Bob Dylan, who's kept evolving and changing his sound. I think that's what you should do as an artist. Why be comfortable?

Second records aren't usually very good. Even Bob Dylan's was a bit disappointing.

In some of the greatest recordings ever made, the performance is a part of the recording. Dylan's 'Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35' is all about the esthetic of that performance. You can hear the room.

I've always been amused by [Bob] Dylan; I don't think he's been amused by me.

I guess I haven't talked to Bob Dylan since before then [interview to Rolling Stones]. I follow his career.

When I approached one of his secretaries for an interview, I was told that Bob [Dylan] didn't want to see me anymore because of what my wife Margot [Hentoff] had written.

Bob Dylan was uncomfortable being known as just a protest singer. He wanted to go back into himself and do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.

I'm always looking for overlooked post-Dylan singer-songwriter records from the '70s.

If I had an axe on the evening at Newport when [Dylan] broke out the electric guitar, I'd have cut his cable.

Songs came first. I started out in 1965 trying to copy the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Stones, like most kids I knew. I'm still trying. Songs are hard to beat.

Bob Dylan tends not to have geographical or chronological markers that tie a song to any specific context, so they stay alive, stay relevant.

Bob Dylan truly is a poet whose song is part of the poetry.

When I was playing with Bob Dylan in, like, 1966, I was, like, 20 years old.

I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That's their life.

Bob Dylan said, "The executioner's face is always well-hidden". That's the problem: The cross pulls that hood off.

I would be quite happy never to play any of my better-known songs again. But unless you're Dylan, you can't afford to completely disregard what your audience wants.