Bob Dylan quotes
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“Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to The Smithsonian. Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn't make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Really, time is your soul mate.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“People have a hard time accepting anything that overwhelms them.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Some of the old folk singers used to phrase things in an interesting way, and then, I got my style from seeing a lot of outdoor-type poets, who would recite their poetry. When you don't have a guitar, you recite things differently, and there used to be quite a few poets in the jazz clubs, who would recite with a different type of attitude.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”
-- Bob DylanSource : "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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“There's a lot of false prophets around and that's the trouble. People say they think they know what's right and other people get people to follow them because they have a certain type of charisma, and there's always people willing to take over. People want a leader. And there will be more and more of them.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“You need something to open up a new door, to show you something you seen before but overlooked a hundred times or more”
-- Bob Dylan -
“You have to work out where your place is. And who you are. But we're all spirit. That's all we are, we're just walking dressed up in a suit of skin, and we're going to leave that behind.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“There's beauty in the silver singing river There's beauty in the sunrise in the sky But none of these and nothing else can match the beauty That I remember in my true love's eyes”
-- Bob Dylan -
“I like the fans, but I don't feel an obligation that I have to be an example to them, like say maybe a baseball player would, or a football player or maybe some other type of musicians. I don't feel I have to really set an example that somebody else has to live up to.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“I think of rock 'n' roll as a combination of country blues and swing band music, not Chicago blues, and modern pop.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”
-- Bob DylanSource : "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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“We don't see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it - everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“People's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Passion is a young man's game. Young people can be passionate. Older people gotta be more wise.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness.”
-- Bob DylanSource : "Bob Dylan: 'Passion is a young man's game, older people gotta be wise'". Interview with Robert Love, www.independent.co.uk. February 7, 2015.
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“Everything passes, Everything changes, Just do what you think you should do.”
-- Bob DylanSource : Song: To Ramona, Album: Another Side of Bob Dylan, 1964
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“I can picture the color of the song, or the shape of it, or who it is that I'm trying to appeal to, in the song, and what I'm trying to, almost, reinforce my feelings for. And I know that sounds sort of vague and abstract, but I've got a handle on it when I'm doing it.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“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.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“your problem is that wanna better word for world”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“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.”
-- Bob DylanSource : Song: Forever Young, Album: Planet Waves, 1974
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“It's not important what other people call you. If you yourself know you're a fake, that's tougher to live with.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
-- Bob DylanSource : Interview published with the "Biograph" album set, 1985.
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“It's always disappointing when people decide for one reason or another that they don't like your work anymore, but you can't try to please people, because then you're just going to be doing - you'll never live it down, y'know it'll always be dogging you around - you might be being a fake about the whole thing.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“I used to think it's better if you just live and die and no one knows who you are.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“When I was growing up - say in the fifties - the thirties to me didn't even exist. I couldn't even imagine them in any kind of way, so I don't expect anyone growing up now is gonna even understand what the sixties were all about, anymore than I could the thirties or twenties.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and 'load every rift' of your subject with ore.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Sometimes you get out from behind the wheel and let someone else step on the gas.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“There are degrees of happiness. You go from one to the other and then back again. It's hard to be completely happy when those around us are suffering and groaning from hunger.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“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”
-- Bob Dylan -
“People have different emotional levels. Especially when you're young. Back then I guess most of my influences could be thought of as eccentric. Mass media had no overwhelming reach so I was drawn to the traveling performers passing through.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“People disagreeing everywhere you look makes you wanna stop and read a book.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“The more you act the further you get away from the truth.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“We shouldn't confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, "My character this, and my character that." Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don't have to explain it to me.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“You don't write a song to sit there on a page. You write it to sing it.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“The Rolling Stones are truly the greatest rock and roll band in the world and always will be. The last too. Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop-rock, you name it... you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first and the last and no one's ever done it better.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than those who are most content.”
-- Bob DylanSource : "Song: 'Brownsville Girl'". 1986.
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“If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“I say there're no depressed words just depressed minds.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Being on tour is like being in limbo. It's like going from nowhere to nowhere.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said, Bob, why are you resisting me? I said, I'm not resisting you! He said, You gonna follow me? I said, I've never thought about that before! He said, When you're not following me, you're resisting me.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me now.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“But I would not feel so all alone, everybody must get stoned.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“You're gonna have to serve somebody; well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody...”
-- Bob Dylan -
“A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“All the money you made will never buy back your soul.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“If you don't underestimate me, I won't underestimate you.”
-- Bob DylanSource : Song: Dear Landlord, Album: John Wesley Harding, 1967
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“I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“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 had taught me that.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“... 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...”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“What looks large from a distance, close up ain’t never that big.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.”
-- Bob DylanSource : Bob Dylan (2007). “Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews”, Hodder & Stoughton
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“Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening. Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing. Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“If I wasn't Bob Dylan, I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“In songs, you have to tell people about something they didn't see and weren't there for, and you have to do it as if you were.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“If you try to be anyone but yourself, you will fail; if you are not true to your own heart, you will fail. Then again, there's no success like failure”
-- Bob Dylan -
“No reason to get excited,' the thief, he kindly spoke, There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“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.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.”
-- Bob DylanSource : Song: Forever Young
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“Adulterers in churches and ***** in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?”
-- Bob Dylan -
“My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn't possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The new order is Rapidly fadin'. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There's a battle outside ragin'. It'll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“One should never be where one does not belong.”
-- Bob Dylan -
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“Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one If you can't lend your hand, For the times they are a-changin'.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“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.”
-- Bob Dylan -
“The future for me is already a thing of the past - You were my first love and you will be my last”
-- Bob Dylan -
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