Top 880 Quotes & Sayings by Bob Dylan - Page 6

I practice a faith that's been long abandoned Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road

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

When it came time to hire a guitar player ... I didn't even have to think about it ... Mike Bloomfield was the best guitar player I'd ever heard.

I didn't know whether to duck or to run, so I ran.

It's like my whole life never happened, When I see you, it's as if I never had a thought. I know this dream, it might be crazy, But it's the only one I've got.

Really the truth is just a plain picture. A plain picture of, let's say, a tramp vomiting in the sewere. You know, and next door to the picture Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. C. W. Jones on the subway going to work. You know, any kind of picture. Just make a collage of pictures.

It's not a house, it's a home.

It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs. When I first heard Elvis' voice, I knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody ... hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway. People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.

I just try to understand that tomorrow is another day.

Every cause that ever I fought, I fought it full without regret or shame.

[Bob] Dylan crashed his motorcycle in 1967, and almost died. A few years ago, he referred to the experience as a "transfiguration."

In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinking.

Technology is mechanical and contrary to the emotions that inform a person's life. The country music field has especially been hit hard by this. All my songs have been written by people who went out of fashion years ago. Just like da Vinci and Renoir and van Gogh. Nobody paints like that anymore. But it can't be wrong to try.

Well, I sing by night, wander by day. I'm on the road and it looks like I'm here to stay.

I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation.

How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free.

That's another way of writing a song, of course. Just talking to somebody that ain't there. That's the best way. That's the truest way. Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me, it's something to strive after.

Come Senators, Congressman, please heed the call, don't stand in the doorway, don't block the hall.

I dug it, New York City, all-the streets and the snows and the starving and the five-flight walkups and sleeping in rooms with ten people. I dug the trains and the shadows, the way I dug ore mines and coal mines. I just jumped right to the bottom of New York.

Look out your window, and I'll be gone. You're the reason I'm a-traveling on.

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.

Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb/I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from/Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer/It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

Every brain is civilized, Every nerve is analyzed, Everything is criticized when you are in need.

Rod's a great singer. He's got a great voice, but there's no point to put a 30-piece orchestra behind him. I'm not going to knock anybody's right to make a living but you can always tell if somebody's heart and soul is into something, and I didn't think Rod was into it in that way.

You say you've lost your faith But that's not where it's at You have no faith to lose and you know it

Somebody had to be Bob Dylan. I guess I was best equipped to do the job.

I want to use songs that everybody knows or thinks they know. I want to show them a different side of it and open up that world in a more unique way. You have to believe what the words are saying and the words are as important as the melody. Unless you believe the song and have lived it, there's little sense in performing it. I never wanted to be a singer that

My love is like some raven at my window with a broken wing.

There's not even room enough to be anywhere/It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.../I was born here and I'll die here against my will/I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still.

I really don't like to hurt myself. I have a good understanding with all the women who have been in my life, whether I see them occasionally or not.

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.

Her profession's her religion, her sin is lifelessness.

I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Duke of Disobedience, Leader of the Freeloaders, Kaiser of Apostasy, Archbishop of Anarchy, the Big Cheese. Horrible titles any way you want to look at it. All code words for Outlaw.

I used to play hockey when I was growing up. Everyone sort of learns how to skate and play hockey at an early age.

He hands you a nickel, he hands you a dime. He asks you with a grin, if you're having a good time.

If ever asked to look at yourself, don't.

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you.

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.

I don't have the kinds of relationships that are built on any kind of false pretense, not to say that I haven't. I've had just as many as anybody else, but I haven't had them in a long time.

We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spiritual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it's not going to do anything for you.

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 one who is not being born is dying.

I march in the parade of liberty But as long as I love you I’m not free How long must I suffer such abuse Won’t you let me see you smile one time before I turn you loose?

The motorcycle black madonna Two wheeled gypsy queen.

Done so many evil things in the name of love, it's a crying shame. I never did see no fire that could put out a flame.

You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future.

In the home of the brave, Jefferson turning over in his grave.

I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn I courted her proudly but now she is gone Gone as the season she's taken

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

Whatever that ["transfiguration" by Bob Dylan] means, it's true that the poetic brilliance of the early career would never really reappear.

The more you act the further you get away from the truth.

I need all kinds of songs - fast ones, slow ones, minor key, ballads, rumbas - and they all get juggled around during a live show. I've been trying for years to come up with songs that have the feeling of a Shakespearean drama, so I'm always starting with that.

On the cliffs of your wild cat charms I'm riding.

There would be brilliant songs, but, as [Bob] Dylan admitted on the recent Martin Scorsese documentary about him (No Direction Home), the specific muse that inspired "It's Alright Ma" would not return.

When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud, I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.

Passion is a young man's game. Young people can be passionate. Older people gotta be more wise.

To preach of peace and brotherhood, oh what might be the cost? A man he did it long ago, and they hung him on a cross.

She had bullets in her eyes and they fired.

I made a bargain with him, the chief in a world we can't see. (devil)

Like the lion tears the flesh off a man, so can a woman who passes herself off as a male.