Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Crimson flames tied through my ears rolling high and mighty traps, pounced with fire on flaming roads using ideas as my maps.
In songs, you have to tell people about something they didn't see and weren't there for, and you have to do it as if you were.
It is the first line that gives the inspiration and then it's like riding a bull. Either you just stick with it, or you don't.
Feel like a broke-down engine, ain't got no drivin' wheel. You all been down and lonesome, you know just how a poor man feels.
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.
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.
Once I went into songwriting, I figured I had to - I couldn't be a hellfire rock 'n' roller. But I could write hellfire lyrics.
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.
Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want (Bob Dylan's dad)
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.
The good Samaritan, he's getting dressed, he's getting ready for the show. He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row.
People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.
Well now what's the use in dreamin' You got better things to do Dreams never did work for me anyway Even when they did come true
Well the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount, But nothing really matters much it's doom alone that counts.
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip, my toes to numb to step, wait only for my boot heels to be wandering.
They like to take all this money from sin, build big universities to study in, sing Amazing Grace all the way to the Swiss banks.
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
Broken bottles, broken plates, broken switches, broken gates. Broken dishes, broken parts, streets are filled with broken hearts.
People call you this or that. But I can't respond because then it seems like I'm defensive, you know, what does it matter, really?
Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it's available. When the cost comes down, look out!
If you don't have to write songs, why write them? I've got enough where I don't really feel the urge to write anything additional.
You got men who can't hold peace and women who can't control their tongues. The rich seduce the poor, and the old seduce the young.
[Bob] Dylan crashed his motorcycle in 1967, and almost died. A few years ago, he referred to the experience as a "transfiguration."
Everyone of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal, pouring off every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.
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.
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 set my monkey on the log, and ordered him to do the Dog. He wagged his tail and shook his head, and he went and did the Cat instead.
Well, I try my best to be just like I am, But everybody wants you to be just like them, They sing while you slave and I just get bored
My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited poems with jazz bands.
Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?
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
If you're looking to get silly, you better go back to from where you came. because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same.
I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.
In another lifetime she must have owned the world, or been faithfully wed to some righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlit streams.
Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn't work.
Ain't it hard when you discover that, he wasn't really where it's at, after he took from you everything he could steal. How does it feel?
Just a reminder, if you tell anyone about what happened with Jonah last night, I'll destroy all of my writing and never play music again.
Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.
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.
Whatever that ["transfiguration" by Bob Dylan] means, it's true that the poetic brilliance of the early career would never really reappear.
Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.
A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness.
Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in St. Paul [Minnesota] in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my own language.
My favorite politician was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who reminded me of Tom Mix, and there wasn't any way to explain that to anybody.
"Tangled Up in Blue," shifts perspective several times during the song to tell a "tangled" version of [Bob] Dylan's marriage and dissolution.
You know, sometimes a person's reputation can be far more colossal than the influence of the person. I don't pay any attention to it anymore.
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.
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.
I’m in awe of McCartney. He’s about the only one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. And he’s never let up... He’s just so damn effortless.
How many a year has passed and gone and many gamble has been lost and won, and many a road taken by a friend and each one I've never seen again.