Bob Dylan

“It's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you.”

“I march in the parade of libertyBut as long as I love you I’m not freeHow long must I suffer such abuseWon’t you let me see you smile one time before I turn you loose?”

“Your heart is like the ocean, mysterious and dark.”

“Build me a cabin in UtahMarry me a wife, catch rainbow troutHave a bunch of kids who call me “Pa”That must be what it’s all aboutThat must be what it’s all about”

“A question in your nerves is litYet you know there is no answer fitTo satisfy, insure you not to quitTo keep it in your mind and not forgetThat it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to...”

“When are you gonna wake up and strengthened the things that remain.”

“It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry”

“Todays the day gonna grab my trombone and blow" Thunder on the Mountain”

“While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir Bent out of shape from society's pliers Cares not to come up any higher But rather get you down in the hole That he's in.”

“People need to be encouraged, not stepped on and put in a straitjacket!”

“She knows there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all.”

“Shedding off one more layer of skinKeeping one step ahead of the persecutor within”

“Why wait any longer for the one you loveWhen he’s standing in front of you”

“Who am I helping, what am I breaking, what am I giving, what am I taking?”

“Everything passes,Everything changes,Just do what you think you should do.”

“There is nothing so stable as change.”

“Well the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount,But nothing really matters much it's doom alone that counts.”

“Without freedom of speech, I might be in the swamp.”

“They say everything can be replaced,Yet every distance is not near.So I remember every faceOf every man who put me here.I see my light come shiningFrom the west unto the east.Any day now, any day now,I shall be released.”

“Now the wintertime is comingThe windows are filled with frostI went to tell everybodyBut I could not get acrossWell, I wanna be your lover, babyI don't wanna be your bossDon't say I never warned youWhen your train gets lost.”

“So now I'm going back againI got to get her somehowAll the people we used to knowThey're an illusion to me nowSome are mathematiciansSome are carpenter's wivesDon't know how it all got startedI don't what they're doing with their livesBut me I'm still on the roadHeading for another jointWe always did feel the sameWe just saw it from a different point of viewTangled up in Blue.”

“They're selling postcards of the hanging They're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailorsThe circus is in townHere comes the blind commissionerThey've got him in a tranceOne hand is tied to the tight-rope walkerThe other is in his pantsAnd the riot squad they're restlessThey need somewhere to goAs Lady and I look out tonightFrom Desolation Row.”

“There is no equality. The only thing people all have in common is that they are all going to die.”

“I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul...”

“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)”

“Everything that I'm sayingYou can say it just as good”

“How does it feel?”

“Some times I think this whole worldIs one big prison yeardSome of us are prisonersThe rest of us are guards”

“You can never be wise and be in love at the same time.”

“...I had stood outside of Poe's house on 3rd street, too, and had done the same thing, staring mournfully up at the windows. The city was like some uncarved block without any name or shape and it showed no favoritism. Everything was always new, always changing. It was never the same old crowd upon the streets.”

“God said: "Abraham, kill me a son. Abe said: "Man, you must be putting me on." God said: "No." Abe said: "What" God said: "You can do what you want Abe but the next time you see me coming you'd better run". Abe said: "Where you want this killing done?" God said: "Out on Highway 61.”

“Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb.”

“You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

“aretha with no goals, eternally single & one step soft of heaven/ let it be understood that she owns this melody along with her emotional diplomats & her earth & her musical secrets”

“And it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns... that I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn't have allowed before, that I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale... that things had become too familiar and I might have to disorientate myself. p.71”

“Look at the sun sinkin' like a ship. Ain't that just like my heart, babe. When you kissed my lips?”

“You say you lost your faithBut that's not where it's atYou had no faith to loseAnd you know it”

“bob dylan new orleans”

“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?”

“We all like motorcycles to some degree.”

“We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it”

“It's not dark yetBut it's getting there”

“May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true. May you always know the truth and see the lights surrounding you. May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong. May you stay forever young.”

“I had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren't for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren't friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn't come gently to the shore. I guess you could say they weren't commercial.Not only that, my style was too erratic and hard to pigeonhole for the radio, and songs, to me, were more important that just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic. Greil Marcus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call it "the invisible republic."Whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. i just thought of popular culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.I didn't know what age of history we were in nor what the truth of it was. Nobody bothered with that. If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs taught me that.”

“I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, "Running Scared," exploded into the room.Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.”

“Come writers and criticsWho prophesize with your penAnd keep your eyes wideThe chance won't come againAnd don't speak too soonFor the wheel's still in spinAnd there's no tellin' whoThat it's namin'For the loser nowWill be later to winFor the times they are a-changin'.”

“The line it is drawnThe curse it is castThe slow one nowWill later be fastAs the present nowWill later be pastThe new order isRapidly fadin'.And the first one nowWill later be lastFor the times they are a-changin'.”

“Come senators, congressmenPlease heed the callDon't stand in the doorwayDon't block up the hallFor he that gets hurtWill be he who has stalledThere's a battle outside ragin'.It'll soon shake your windowsAnd rattle your wallsFor the times they are a-changin'.”

“Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's there”

“I wanted to read all these books, but I would have to have been in a rest home or something to do that.”