Top 100 Dylan's Quotes
#1. Most of the songs came from Europe and Africa and now they were coming back to us. Many of [Bob] Dylan's best songs came from Scotland, Ireland or England. It was a sort of cultural exchange.
John Lennon
#2. When I started Dylan's Candy Bar in 2001, I wanted it to be a place that merged my love of pop culture, fashion, art and music with candy. Since then, we have been fortunate to pioneer artistic partnerships with many legends.
Dylan Lauren
#3. In some of the greatest recordings ever made, the performance is a part of the recording. Dylan's 'Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35' is all about the esthetic of that performance. You can hear the room.
Moby
#4. You can't criticize Bob Dylan's singing. You have to respect Billy Joel as a brilliant poet. You can't tell me there's a better rock band ever than Led Zeppelin. And if you speak during the Eagles' "Last Resort," we're done. I'm just asking for seven minutes. This stuff really matters, you know.
Charlie Sheen
#5. Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.
Steve Earle
#6. I had the only beard in the Western Hemisphere that made Bob Dylan's look good.
Bill Walton
#7. I think that's what Dylan's trying to do: to create a space artistically where something else can take shape, can take life - where there's hope.
Sean Wilentz
#8. 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.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
#9. Bob Dylan's Christianity has been allusive, idiosyncratic, and never the sort to place him on anyone's side in any Kulturkampf.
Christopher Caldwell
#10. The alphabet Miss Poobner taught was represented on the wall above her head by a series of personified cartoonlike letters
Mr. A, Eating an Apple; Mrs. B, Buying a Broom; and so on
and something insipid about the parade of grinning letters defeated Dylan's will utterly.
Jonathan Lethem
#11. We'd buy brochures of Dylan lyrics and stay up late interpreting them. Dylan's words struck chords of creative thinking.
Walter Isaacson
#12. I'm feeling pretty motivated," Dylan said. "Cuz the sooner you leave, the sooner Alec and I can get back to that sex swing."
Tyler paused in the midst of picking up the remaining boxes. "Alex doesn't have a sew swing."
The grin that hijacked Dylan's face was huge. "He does now.
River Jaymes
#13. Gordon Lightfoot has created some of the most beautiful and lasting music of our time. He is Bob Dylan's favorite singer/songwriter - high praise from the best of us, applauded by the rest of us.
Kris Kristofferson
#14. Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want (Bob Dylan's dad)
Bob Dylan
#15. Much as my Boomer friends will hate me for saying this, Kanye West is the New Dylan. Not only do Kanye's best lyrics match Dylan's prescience, highly inventive word-play and genius for storytelling, his indefatigable cockiness eerily channels Muhammad Ali.
Dan Hill
#16. I timed my previous wife's pregnancy to the moment to have my son born on Bob Dylan's 50th birthday. There is no bigger Bob Dylan fan than me. You don't just time the day and impregnate your wife to get your kid to be born on Bob Dylan's 50th birthday.
Charlie Trotter
#17. But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.
Billy Bragg
#18. He'd kill one to save me, but not to save himself. Just like I'd risk Dylan's life for him but not for me. It makes us a little horrible.
Hannah Moskowitz
#19. I've met Bob Dylan's bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table, he's sadly mistaken,
Townes Van Zandt
#20. Another Holy Grail for some collectors is Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, the 1963 pressing that has four songs that were deleted from subsequent pressings, known to fetch up to $35,000 in stereo and $16,500 in mono in excellent condition. 1970s
Anonymous
#21. Second records aren't usually very good. Even Bob Dylan's was a bit disappointing.
Madeleine Peyroux
#22. Bob Dylan's first couple of records in the 60's weren't considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album.
John Mellencamp
#23. But you have to understand, my beard is so nasty. I mean, it's the only beard in the history of Western civilization that makes Bob Dylan's beard look good.
Bill Walton
#24. Bob Dylan's not a hype and a haircut: he's the real thing.
Benmont Tench
#25. I never could understand - it was impossible for me to get my head around - what the furor was, what the sense of betrayal and anger and rage was about Bob Dylan's beginning to perform with a band, to play rock-and-roll, to get on the radio.
Greil Marcus
#26. Actually, I never liked Dylan's kind of music before; I always thought he sounded just like Yogi Bear.
Mick Ronson
#27. My heroes, I couldn't imagine them practicing. Like Bob Dylan, you know? Bob Dylan's a very, very good guitar player, but it's like he's trying to hide it. I always loved this attitude. When you're very good ... it's like being an athlete - and I always hated sports!
Laurent Brancowitz
#28. Bob Dylan's one of the greatest blues singers of the western world; ancient art, on-the-spot improvisation, mind quickness, endless variation, classical formulae, prophetic vision, mighty wind-horse.
Allen Ginsberg
#29. After the Beatles and Dylan, there's this assumption that you are a singer-songwriter, or that if someone else is writing your rhymes, you're a fake rapper.
Alan Light
#30. 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
#31. And it's a hard, It's a hard, It's a hard, It's a hard, It's a hard rain gonna fall.
Bob Dylan
#32. Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,
Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.
Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,
The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,
Nor the flint in the lover's mauling.
Dylan Thomas
#33. I've seen stand up comedy, and after a while you start to notice that a lot of people are doing things that are like a lot of other people. There can be a bit of a herd mentality, and that's obviously less interesting because there's less going on. I'm just being totally frank with you.
Dylan Moran
#34. It's a shadowy world, skies are slippery grey. A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet. He'll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat, take the motherless children off the street and place them at the feet of a harlot.
Bob Dylan
#35. I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.
Dylan Moran
#36. Advertising signs: they con you into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on all around you
Bob Dylan
#37. There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas.
Robert Adamson
#38. It's not easy to define poetry.
Bob Dylan
#39. It rubs me the wrong way, a camera ... It's a frightening thing ... Cameras make ghosts out of people.
Bob Dylan
#40. Romance never does go out of fashion. It's radical. But it's out of step with the current media culture.
Bob Dylan
#41. It's insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!
Brian Eno
#42. You better start swimming, or you'll sink like a stone. Because the Time's they are a-changing.
Bob Dylan
#43. There's always one more notch and four more aces Billy, and you're playin' all alone.
Bob Dylan
#44. I'm going to do whatever the world tells me to. I'm going to act like I'm in a goddamn Bob Dylan song and blow in the direction of the wind. I'm going to pretend my future's wide open, and that anything can happen.
Nicola Yoon
#45. Well, it's hard to stumble And land in some muddy lagoon When it's nine below zero And three o'clock in the afternoon.
Bob Dylan
#46. Having hits buries a singer in the past. A lot of singers hide in the past because it's safer back there. If you've ever heard today's country music, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Bob Dylan
#47. He gambled all his life, he's got 27 children, yet he's never had a wife.
Bob Dylan
#48. Maybe someday you will understand, that something for nothing is everybody's plan.
Bob Dylan
#49. Definition destroys ... there's nothing definite in this world
Bob Dylan
#50. She knows there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all.
Bob Dylan
#51. America's work ethic is non-stop; it's not even enshrined in law that workers have to get their two weeks holiday money. But Americans work harder than everyone else I can think of.
Dylan Moran
#52. Everybody is corrupted by hotel rooms. You can't help it. It's the only place in the world where you walk in and the first think you do is steal everything before you take your coat off.
Dylan Moran
#53. I can see God in a daisy. I can see God at night in the wind and rain. I see Creation just about everywhere. The highest form of song is prayer. King David's, Solomon's, the wailing of a coyote, the rumble of the Earth.
Bob Dylan
#54. Fruit ... it's just God showing off. "Look at all the colours I know!"
Dylan Moran
#55. When did you ever hear of a child not in need? 'Oh that's enough jam tart for me, I'll just go now and clean the toilets.'
Dylan Moran
#56. I don't believe him for a second, but I'm not telling Daisy that Dylan lied because I know what it's like to want a girl that much. To get dragged in the dirt behind her hoping you won't lose your grip.
Cath Crowley
#58. When I was a child, I wanted to watch things that made me laugh. It's attacking boredom, as simple as that. I was 19 when I first went to a comedy club - I wanted to do it, so I gave it a try and that was it. I found my office.
Dylan Moran
#59. You don't count the dead, when god's on your side.
Bob Dylan
#60. City's just a jungle; more games to play Trapped in the heart of it, tryin' to get away I was raised in the country, I been workin' in the town I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down
Bob Dylan
#61. I'm doing a Dylan Thomas film, Map of Love, with Mick Jagger producing again. It's a wonderful script.
Dougray Scott
#62. What I prefer is an audience who listen. And are intelligent. Which I try and assume every audience is. And that if something goes wrong, it's generally my fault and not theirs.
Dylan Moran
#63. There's been rumors of war and wars that have been The meaning of life has been lost in the wind And some people thinkin' that the end is close by 'Stead of learnin' to live they are learnin' to die
Bob Dylan
#64. Yeah, you're sitting in a tree because you're fine. That's easy to see. I can't believe this is Maximum Ride, destroyer of despots, warrior hottie, leader of the flock! All you need now to make yourself more pathetic is a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream!
James Patterson
#65. What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.
Justin Townes Earle
#66. I do look at songwriting as a lot of work. I don't over-intellectualize music as a special medium that only some people deserve to do. I think it's something you do if you put the work in.
Jakob Dylan
#67. Ain't it hard when you discover that, he wasn't really where it's at, after he took from you everything he could steal. How does it feel?
Bob Dylan
#68. The country music stations plays soft but there's nothing, really nothing to turn off.
Bob Dylan
#69. It's sundown on the Union and what's made in the USA, sure was a good idea, until greed got in the way.
Bob Dylan
#70. I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever's going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.
John Lennon
#71. Sold my guitar to the baker's son for a few crumbs and a place to hide.
Bob Dylan
#72. I get a phone call once every 18 months from some mad person who wants me to do something for less than no money and they give me about a week's notice. That's my film career, most of the time.
Dylan Moran
#73. He frowned, his voice softer. "I don't know if it's Josh or what, but you need to get the hell out, or I swear to God, you'll end up spending the rest of your life in this shithole, just like all those girls - " "You mean like me?" Dylan asked, her voice suddenly hard.
Heather Demetrios
#74. Saying directors don't write because they don't type is very wrong, it's like saying Dylan doesn't write music because he doesn't write notation.
William Monahan
#75. Anger and jealousy's all that he sells us, he's content when you're under his thumb. Madmen oppose him, but your kindness throws him, to survive it you play deaf and dumb.
Bob Dylan
#76. I don't think I've ever been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come.
Bob Dylan
#77. It's quite widespread in rock culture, that mythology of the shooting star.
I'd rather be the North star. As bob (Dylan) says, you can navigate by it.
Bono
#78. Everybody has their own idea of what's a poet. Robert Frost, President Johnson, T.S.Eliot, Rudolf Valentino - they're all poets. I like to think of myself as the one who carries the light bulb.
Bob Dylan
#79. For them that think death's honesty won't fall upon them naturally life sometimes must get lonely.
Bob Dylan
#80. Johnny's in the basement Mixing up the medicine I'm on the pavement Thinking 'bout the government.
Bob Dylan
#81. I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound. Someone's always yellin', 'Turn him down'."
"Highlands" from "Time Out of Mind" (1997)
Bob Dylan
#82. Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.
Joni Mitchell
#83. I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That's their life.
Robbie Robertson
#84. Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.
Bob Dylan
#85. I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.
Bob Dylan
#86. I don't watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when you're alone and someone's voice is coming through their work. There's a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more.
Dylan Moran
#87. But there's got to be an opening somewhere here in front of me. Through this maze of ugliness and greed.
Jakob Dylan
#88. Well, that's not true. I need to work for a living."
"No, that's not true. You think you need to work like this because that's what you've been told. That is merely an idea put into your head. In actuality, you can walk away any time you want.
Dylan Callens
#89. Whenever anybody does something in a big way, it's always rejected at home and accepted someplace else.
Bob Dylan
#90. It's sad that because I have one friend who is in the public eye, just being seen out together once means we're romantically involved. But I don't take it seriously, and it doesn't really affect me much.
Dylan Penn
#91. Every man's conscience is vile and depraved / You cannot depend on it to be your guide when it's you who must keep it satisfied.
Bob Dylan
#92. Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it's available. When the cost comes down, look out!
Bob Dylan
#93. When I was 12 years old, or however old I was when Bringing It All Back Home came out, I'd just skip back and forth endlessly between 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' and 'It's Alright, Ma' and 'Mr. Tambourine Man,' and now my Dylan roots are showing big time.
Rodney Crowell
#94. The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself.
Dylan Moran
#95. Ed gives him a dirty look. Leo grins. Dylan twitches. It feels like something's going on, I think loudly, and I know that Jazz hears my thought because she gives me her serious look and blows a chewing-gum bubble in my direction.
Cath Crowley
#96. A lot of people don't like the road, but it's as natural to me as breathing.
Bob Dylan
#97. 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
#98. Miss Hunter leaned toward Stormy. Well, as you also may know, ever since the year when Dylan Jackson was nominated for and won prom queen without his knowledge, it's been school policy to inform all nominees that they have been selected as a candidate for prom queen.
John Zakour
#99. Irish people give big hellos and very little goodbyes. Unless they're female, and then they spend five hours talking in the doorway to the person that's leaving their house.
Dylan Moran
#100. Mazda paid little attention to Sartre.
"What's the matter? Afraid that you'll lose to a man? A mere mortal?"
This caught Mazda's attention.
"If you don't come and get me, I'll tell everyone that I beat a god. A giant pussy of a god.
Dylan Callens
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
