Bob Dylan

In the dime stores and bus stations
 People talk of situations
 Read books, repeat quotations
 Draw conclusions on the wall
 Some speak of the future
 My love she speaks softly
 She knows there’s no success like failure
 And that failure’s no success at all -Bob Dylan, “Love Minus Zero / No Limit” (1965)

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 are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.

So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away, to the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong.

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.

Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.

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.

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

I was lingering out on the pavement. There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him . . . I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck . . . Wherever I am, I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows.

May you have a strong foundation when the winds of change shift...and may you be forever young.

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

You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend. When I was down you just stood there a grinin

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.

I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?

There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.

Look, you know i don't wanna come on ungrateful, but that warren report, you know as well as me, just didn't make it. You know, like they might as well have asked some banana salesman from des moines, who was up in toronto on the big day, if he saw anyone around looking suspicious/.

A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.

I'm not the kind of cat that's going to cut off an ear if I can't do something.