Quotes By Bob Dylan

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.

You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

It's not easy to define poetry.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking, my voice changed... so drastically, I couldn't believe it myself.

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

I'm inconsistent, even to myself.

It's hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings. And I've never been too impressed.

I don't think I'm tangible to myself.

I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.

Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

You can't be happy by doing something groovy.

Having these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

I'm speaking for all of us. I'm the spokesman for a generation.

You're going to die. You're going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we're just going to be gone. The world's going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that.