A Quote by Leonard Cohen

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.

Leonard Cohen

Quote Topics

Any Anyhow Bob Bob Dylan Dylan Knows More Songs Songwriter Than Think Us Write

Quote Author

Leonard Cohen
Canadian - Novelist
September 21, 1934 - November 7, 2016

I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us: you don't write the songs anyhow. So if you're lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you're lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this.

Leonard Cohen

I think everyone mentions Bob Dylan, but he's someone I just admire so much as a songwriter. I think people write songs, and then there's Bob Dylan songs. He's one step ahead of just everybody else.

Tom Odell

I think Bob Dylan's a good songwriter. I think he's the best songwriter in the world probably.

Chrissie Hynde

I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan. There are two categories: Dylan and everybody else. It's as simple as that. And it's going to be that way until he dies.

Steve Earle

Bob Dylan is great. I've been compared to him a lot. I think when people see a person on stage with a guitar they just think, 'Bob Dylan!'

Jake Bugg

Bob Dylan is great. Ive been compared to him a lot. I think when people see a person on stage with a guitar they just think, Bob Dylan!

Jake Bugg

One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.

John Mellencamp

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

Bob Dylan

I'm a songwriter, actually. And when I say I'm a songwriter, I'm saying I can write songs for more than just myself.

Yo Gotti

We didn't have the phrase 'style icon' when I was young, but I have to say, I really copied Bob Dylan when I was younger: a little bit of Bob Dylan or a lot of Bob Dylan and the French symbolist poets - I liked how they dressed - and Catholic school boys.

Patti Smith

My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.

Chris Cornell

I can't write story-songs, like I couldn't write a Bob Dylan or Tom Waits song. I can only write whatever weird phrases come into my head, and hope that they're good.

Jay Watson

I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.

John Mellencamp

I think my legacy is important because my songs - perhaps more than those of any other songwriter I know - cover every movement from 1965 on, socially and artistically. If you want songs about ecology, I've got ecology songs; if you want songs about spirituality, I've got spiritual songs.

Donovan

I'm a huge Springsteen fan, and yet if either he or Bob Dylan had to be erased from the world's hard drive, I would save Bob Dylan's work for sure - he's the greater talent, and by leaps and bounds and skyscrapers and rocket blasts. But Bob Dylan is an alien to his public.