Quotes by Bob Dylan
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Wikipedia Summary for Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author and visual artist. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning nearly 60 years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.
Following his self-titled debut album in 1962, which mainly comprised traditional folk songs, Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan the following year. The album features "Blowin' in the Wind" and the thematically complex "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". For many of these songs, he adapted the tunes and phraseology of older folk songs. He went on to release the politically charged The Times They Are a-Changin' and the more lyrically abstract and introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Commenting on the six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" (1965), Rolling Stone wrote: "No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time".
In July 1966, Dylan withdrew from touring after a motorcycle accident. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were released as the collaborative album The Basement Tapes in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes in John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and released a series of albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan's 1997 album Time Out of Mind marked the beginning of a renaissance for his career. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since then, the most recent being Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a series of three albums in the 2010s comprising versions of traditional American standards, especially songs recorded by Frank Sinatra. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour.
Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. He has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power". In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".
![Quote: I don't know what everybody else was fantasizing about but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard. [...] After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back. by author Bob Dylan overlaid on photo of Bob Dylan quote: I don't know what everybody else was fantasizing about but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard. [...] After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back.- black text on quotes background](https://musekitty.com/bob-dylan/quote2431946/quotepic27216484.jpg)
I don't know what everybody else was fantasizing about but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard. [...] After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back.
I'll always thank the Lord when my working day is through, I get my sweet reward to be alone with you.
Don't want to wink at nobody, don't want to be winked at Don't want to be used by nobody for a doormat Don't want to confuse nobody, don't want to be confused Don't want to amuse nobody, don't want to be amused.
Things are going to happen whether I know why they happen or not. You don't find out why things move. You let them move; you watch them move; you stop them from moving: you start them moving. But you don't sit around and try to figure out why there's movement.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.
Situations have ended sad Relationships have all been bad Mine've been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud But there's no way I can compare.
If you try to be anyone but yourself, you will fail; if you are not true to your own heart, you will fail. Then again, there's no success like failure.
You're gonna have to serve somebody; well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools, I've got nothing, Ma, to live up to.
An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's AT somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming. And, as long as you can stay in that realm you'll sort of be alright.
Half of the people can be part right all of the time, Some of the people can be all right part of the time. I think Abraham Lincoln said that. 'I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,' I said that.
How many roads must a man walk down Before your can call him a man? ... The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, The answer is blowin' in the wind.
You say you're looking for someone who'll pick you up each time you fall, to gather flowers constantly and to come each time you call, a lover your life and nothing more. But it ain't me, babe.
There's been rumors of war and wars that have been The meaning of life has been lost in the wind And some people thinkin' that the end is close by 'Stead of learnin' to live they are learnin' to die.
The enemy is subtle, how be it we are so deceived, when truth's in our hearts and we still don't believe.
I like spiritual songs. They struck me as truthful and serious. They brought me down to earth and they lifted me up all in the same moment.
If you like someone's work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years.
Sometimes the things that you liked the best and that have meant the most to you are the things that meant nothing at all to you when you first heard or saw them.
Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?
I always thought the best kind of sunglasses are the motorcycle helmets with the black plastic masks on them. That way, nobody can recognize the back of your head either.
That's another way of writing a song, of course. Just talking to somebody that ain't there. That's the best way. That's the truest way. Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me, it's something to strive after.
Wasn't making any great connection
Wasn't falling for any intricate scheme
Nothing that would pass inspection
Just thinking of a series of dreams.
The truth is far from you, so you know you got to lie. Then you're all the time defending what you can never justify.
This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.
I don't have the kinds of relationships that are built on any kind of false pretense, not to say that I haven't. I've had just as many as anybody else, but I haven't had them in a long time.
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud, I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
I'm not going to read any of these magazines. I mean, because they've just got too much to lose by printing the truth. You know that.
I never read Freud. I've never been attracted to anything he has said, and I think he's started a lot of nonsense with psychiatry and that business. I don't think psychiatry can help or has helped anybody. I think it's a big fraud (pun not intended) on the public.
I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation.
The drunken politician leaps upon the street where mothers weep, and the saviors who are fast asleep, they wait for you.
They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.
You breathed on me and made my life a richer one to live, when I was deep in poverty you taught me how to give. Dried the tears up from my dreams and pulled me from my hole, quenched my thirst and satisfied the burning in my soul.
Sing your praise of progress and the doom machine, the naked truth is still taboo whenever it can be seen.
I march in the parade of liberty But as long as I love you I'm not free How long must I suffer such abuse Won't you let me see you smile one time before I turn you loose?
You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past -- whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.
Bob Dylan was again an entirely new person -- this time old, craggy, cynical, and world-weary, as in Not Dark Yet.
I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you.
Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.
Every man's conscience is vile and depraved You cannot depend on it to be your guide when it's you who must keep it satisfied.
Got no religion. Tried a bunch of different religions. The churches are divided. Can't make up their minds and neither can I.
Aretha with no goals, eternally single and one step soft of heaven let it be understood that she owns this melody along with her emotional diplomats and her earth and her musical secrets.
We don't see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it -- everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life.
I like the fans, but I don't feel an obligation that I have to be an example to them, like say maybe a baseball player would, or a football player or maybe some other type of musicians. I don't feel I have to really set an example that somebody else has to live up to.
Music can save people, but it can't in the commercial way it's being used. It's just too much. It's pollution.
A record ... is a statement, it's its own statement, its own entity, rather than being about something else. If I was a painter ... I don't paint the chair, I would paint feelings about the chair.
Well I'm living in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line. Beauty walks a razor's edge...someday I'll make it mine.
A lot of people don't have much food on their table. But they got a lot of forks 'n knives. And they got to cut somethin'.
Shakespeare, he's in the alley with his pointed shoes and his bells, speaking to some French girl who says she knows me well.
He Ray was working in a tool-and-die factory in Brooklyn, but before that had drifted around, had been employed at the Studebaker plant in South Bend and also at an Omaha slaughterhouse on the kill floor. Once I asked him what that was like. You ever heard of Auschwitz?
And if anybody asks me is it easy to forget I'll say it is easily done, you just pick anyone, and pretend that you never have met.
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey, who pick up on his bread crumb sins, and there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden.
In my dreams, crowds were chanting, challenging me, shouting, Follow us and fit in! I wanted to tell him that life itself has turned into a prowling lion. I wanted to tell him that I needed to escape the blaze of bullshit.
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.
You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies. One day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzin' around your eyes.
It will scramble your head and drag your brain about, sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out.
Well the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount, But nothing really matters much it's doom alone that counts.
Because Dickens and Dostoyevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind.
You have to work out where your place is. And who you are. But we're all spirit. That's all we are, we're just walking dressed up in a suit of skin, and we're going to leave that behind.
I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn I courted her proudly but now she is gone Gone as the season she's taken.
Done so many evil things in the name of love, it's a crying shame. I never did see no fire that could put out a flame.
May God bless and keep you always, May your wishes all come true, May you always do for others And let others do for you. May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung, May you stay forever young.
You five and ten cent women with nothing in your heads, I got a real gal I'm loving and Lord I'll love her 'til I'm dead.
When I first heard Elvis' voice, I knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody ... hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.
Your mind is a your temple, keep it beautiful and free. Don't let an egg get laid in it by something you can't see.
I really don't like to hurt myself. I have a good understanding with all the women who have been in my life, whether I see them occasionally or not.
Rod's a great singer. He's got a great voice, but there's no point to put a 30-piece orchestra behind him. I'm not going to knock anybody's right to make a living but you can always tell if somebody's heart and soul is into something, and I didn't think Rod was into it in that way.
How many times have you heard someone say If I had his money I'd do things my way Hmm, but little they know Hmm, it's so hard to find One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Oh, the inmates and the prisoners I found they were my kind And it was there inside the bars I found my peace of mind But the jails they were too crowded Institutions overflowed So they turned me loose to walk upon Life's hurried tangled road.
To preach of peace and brotherhood, oh what might be the cost? A man he did it long ago, and they hung him on a cross.
Well, it's always been my nature to take chances My right hand drawing back while my left hand advances.
Maybe in the 90s or possibly in the next century people will look upon the 80s as the age of masturbation, when it was taken to the limit; that might be all that's going on right now in a big way.
I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.
Advertising signs: they con you into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on all around you.
Mothers tell your children not to do the things I have done, to spend my life in sin and misery in the House of the Rising Sun.
I can't see my reflection in the waters, I can't speak the sounds that show no pain. I can't hear the echo of my footsteps, or can't remember the sound of my own name.
People have different emotional levels. Especially when you're young. Back then I guess most of my influences could be thought of as eccentric. Mass media had no overwhelming reach so I was drawn to the traveling performers passing through.
Proud to steal her anything she sees, but you will wind up peeking through her key hole down upon your knees.
Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?
All right, I'll take a chance. I will fall in love with you. If i'm a fool you can have the night, you can have the morning too. Can you cook and sew. make flowers grow. Do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all or is your love in vain?
Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world has just gone on. I mean, look at Napoleon -but we went right on. Look at Harpo Marx -the world went around, it didn't stop for a second. It's sad but true. John Kennedy, right?
The good Samaritan, he's getting dressed, he's getting ready for the show. He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row.
You just have to keep going to find that thing that lets you in the door. Sometimes in life when that day comes and you're given the key, you throw it away.
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, they're drinking, thinking that they got it made. Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things, but you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it, babe.
There's not even room enough to be anywhere It's not dark yet, but it's getting there... I was born here and I'll die here against my will I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still.
The corporations have taken over. Even in the recording studio. Actually, the corporate companies have taken over American life most everywhere. Go coast to coast and you will see people wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food. Everything is processed.
You swore you'd never compromise With the mystery tramp, but now you realise He's not selling any alibis As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes And say, do you want to make a deal How does it feel.
Shadows are falling and I've been here all day It's too hot to sleep, time is running away Feel like my soul has turned into steel I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal.
Everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred.
Watch waterfalls of pity roar, you feel to moan but unlike before, you discover that you'd just be one more person crying.
You know, the streets are filled with vipers Who've lost all ray of hope You know, it ain't even safe no more In the palace of the Pope.
There used to be a time when the idea of heroes was important. People grew up sharing those myths and legends and ideals. Now they grow up sharing McDonalds and Disneyland.
Now, each of us has his own special gift And you know this was meant to be true. And if you don't underestimate me I won't underestimate you.
I feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet, putting her in a wheel-barrow and wheeling her down the street.
