Bob Dylan

“I wish that for just one time you could I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes... Then you'd know what a drag it is to see you.”

“Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.”

“It's like going out to the desert and screaming and then having little kids throw their sandbox at you. I'm only 24.”

“The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. 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 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 here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart - to feed pigeons looking for handouts”

“Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you'd like to act.”

“When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to loose.”

“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”

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

“Beauty walks a razors edge, someday I'll make it mine.”

“People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations.”

“Ah, but I was so much older thenI’m younger than that now”

“If my thought-dreams could be seen/ They'd probably put my head in a guillotine.”

“I'm the oldest son of a crazy man, I'm in a cowboy band.”

“The Duke [John Wayne] was a massive figure. He looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn't seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him.”

“Johnny's in the basementMixing up the medicineI'm on the pavementThinking 'bout the government.”

“If I wasn't Bob Dylan, I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.”

“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.”

“There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again.”

“When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.”

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”

“Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.”

“i been meek, and hard like an oak, i seen pretty people disappear like smoke. friends will arrive, friends will disappear. if you want me, honey baby, i'll be here.”

“In the dime stores and bus stations/ People talk of situations/ Read books, repeat quotations/ Draw conclusions on the wall”

“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'.”

“let me forget about today until tomorrow”

“I failed to communicate, that's why I chose to leave”

“the only thing i knew how to do was to keep on keeping on”

“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands”

“your problem is that you wanna better word for world”

“they say every man needs protection, they say every man must fall.yet I swear I see my reflection,some place high above this wall.....and someday I shall be released.”

“Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride/You will not die, its not poison-Tombstone Blues”

“Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game.”

“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?”

“Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift - look out out kid, they keep it all hid”

“I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.”

“Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it's available. When the cost comes down, look out!”

“Walkin' through the leaves fallin' from the trees, Feelin' like a stranger nobody sees...”

“All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.”

“Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting If I could hear his heart softly pounding Yes, and only if he was lying by me Would I lie in my bed once again.”

“I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.”

“It's a wicked life, but what the hell, the stars ain't falling down.”

“The P’lice Department hounded him, they called him Mr. Smith. They got him on conspiracy, they were never quite sure who with. ”

“You better start swimming, or you'll sink like a stone. Because the Time's they are a-changing.”

“I'm glad I'm not me”

“The country music stations plays soft but there's nothing, really nothing to turn off.”

“I just don't hear anyone else making the music I'm making in my head, so I'll have to do it myself.”

“Money doesn't talk, it swears.”

“There must be some kind of way out of here,' said the joker to the thief...”

“A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.”

“Whatever colors you have in your mind, I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine.”