Maybe there's a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you.

Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession.

I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly.

It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

I like life on the road. It's a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like you're in a motorcycle gang.

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.

there's no forsaking what you love no existential leap as witnessed here in time and blood a thousand kisses deep

It's hard to be serious about so many things. [Look at the whole emphasis] on the charts, if you're a songwriter.

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to. And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you.

I am not the one who loves - It's love that chooses me. When hatred with his package comes, you forbid delivery...

My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly through the 10,000 nights I spent alone.

Your heart opens and of course you're completely panicked because you're used to guarding this organ with your life.

And sometimes when the night is slow The wretched and the meek We gather up our hearts and go A Thousand Kisses Deep.

... i didn't fall in love of course it's never up to you but she was walking back and forth and i was passing through

I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don't make it junk.

I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.

May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude.

I’ve seen the nations rise and fall. I’ve heard their stories, heard them all, but love’s the only engine of survival.

When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do.

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.

Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.

Maybe the culture is [particularly] shabby now. Maybe it's because I'm over sixty, that I can feel that about everything.

It's not a cry you can hear at night. It's not somebody who has seen the light. It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life.

The wars they will be fought again The holy dove be caught again bought and sold and bought again; the dove is never free.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart.

I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.

Does anybody have a cigarette? I'm looking forward to that first smoke. I've been looking forward to [it] for about 30 years.

If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

Any of the decisions that I made, if one could actually locate a shape or form, were all within a wall, the landscape of music.

[Prozac] didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on my melancholy, my dark vision, and everything else that I'd taken it for.

To the men and women who own men and women those of us meant to be lovers we will not pardon you for wasting our bodies and time

My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs.

I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.

I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.

I've got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I'm very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I'm really starving.

I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog.

I think there's an appetite for seriousness. Seriousness is voluptuous, and very few people have allowed themselves the luxury of it.

Well it's true, ever since I stopped eating meat I feel a lot better among animals, I feel I can be much more honest when I pat a dog.

Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song.

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.

I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.

I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many humiliating courting events.

No penance serves to renew them, no massive transfusions of trust. Why not even revenge can undo them, so twisted these vows and so crushed.

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain we rise to play a greater part this is the faith from which we start.

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