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Bob Dylan Quotes

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Famous Bob Dylan Quotes

“songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic... whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambition to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk with.”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“Scratch utters the lines: 'I know there is evil in the world - essential evil, not the opposite good or the defective of good but something to which good itself is an irrelevance - a fantasy. No one can live as long as I have, hear what I have heard and not know that. I know too - more precisely - I am ready to belive that there may be something in the world - someone, if you prefer - that purpose evil, that intends it... powerful nations suddenly, without occasion, without apparent cause... decay. Their children turn against them. Their women lose their sense of being a woman. Their families disintegrate.' From there on it only gets better”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“When I put together my early bands, usually some other singer who was short of one would take it away. It seemed like this happened every time one of my bands was fully formed. I couldn’t understand how this was possible seeing that these guys weren’t any better at singing or playing than I was. What they did have was an open door to gigs where there was real money. Anybody who had a band could play at park pavilions, talent shows, county fairgrounds, auctions and store openings, but those gigs didn’t pay except maybe for expenses and sometimes not even for that. These other crooners could perform at small conventions, private wedding parties, golden anniversaries in hotel ballrooms, things like that — and there was cash involved. It was always the promise of money that lured my band away. Truth was, that the guys who took my bands away had connections to someone up the ladder. It went to the very root of things, gave unfair advantage to some and left others squeezed out. How could somebody ever reach the world this way? It seemed like it was the law of life. It got so that I almost always expected to lose my band and it didn’t even shock me anymore if it happened. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one.”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“মোটাসোটা লোকে খোঁজে সুতীক্ষ্ণ ইস্পাত পাতে হাল্কা পাতলা লোকে খোঁজে তারে সব শেষ ভাতে ফাঁপা লোক খোঁজে তারে বুননের কারখানাটাতে মর্যাদা থাকেন কোথায়। জ্ঞানীলোক খোঁজে তারে তৃণদের ধারালো ফলায় তরুণেরা খোঁজে তারে ছায়া যেটা পাশ দিয়ে যায় গরিবেরা রঙচঙে কাঁচ পরে সম্মুখে তাকায় মর্যাদা থাকেন কোথায়। নব বরষের দিনে সহসাই এক লোক খুন হয়ে যায় বলেছিল একজন, মর্যাদাটা সকলের আগেই হারায় খুঁজতে গেলাম তারে বৃহৎ নগরে, খুঁজতে গেলাম তারে মাঝারি শহরে গেলাম সেখানে আমি মাঝরাতে যেইখানে সুরুয শানায় তাকালাম উপরেতে তাকালাম নিচে তাকালাম চারদিকে আগে আর পিছে জিজ্ঞেস করলাম সকল পুলিশে মর্যাদা থাকেন কোথায়? অন্ধলোক একজন ঘোর-লাগা কেটে ওঠে থমকে দাঁড়ায় ডানে বাঁয়ে দুপকেটে দুই হাত ঢুকিয়ে সে খোঁজে আর চায় হঠাৎ রহস্যগুণে অজানা কারণে যদি খোঁজ মিলে যায় মর্যাদা থাকেন কোথায়! মেরিলাউ নামধারী যুবতীর বিয়েবাড়ি গিয়ে তাকে যখন সুধাই সে বলেছে, “তুমি আমি কথা বলি চুপি চুপি সেটা যেন না দেখে সবাই” বলেছে সে, খুন হবে যদি কেউ বলে দেয় মর্যাদা সে আছে কোন ঠাঁই। মর্যাদা থাকেন কোথায়। গিয়েছি খুঁজতে তারে যেখানে শকুন খানা খায় যেতাম গভীরে আরো, প্রয়োজন পড়েনি সেটায় সেখানে শুনেছি বাণী দেবদূতদের, সেখানে শুনেছি কথা জনমানবের তফাৎ কী বুঝিনি তো হায়! মর্যাদা থাকেন কোথায়”

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Book:100 Songs
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“It [folk music] exceeded all human understanding, and if it called out to you, you could disappear and be sucked into it. I felt right at home in this mythical realm made up not with individuals so much as archetypes, vividly drawn archetypes of humanity, metaphysical in shape, each rugged soul filled with natural knowing and inner wisdom. Each demanding a degree of respect. I could believe in the full spectrum of it and sing about it. It was so real, so more true to life than life itself. It was life magnified.”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, "Running Scared," exploded into the room. Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“By combining certain elements of technique which ignite each other I could shit the levels of perception, time-frame structures and systems of rythm which would give my songs a brighter countenance, call them up from the grave [...] It was like parts of my psyche were being communicated to by angels. There was a big fire in the fireplace and the wind was making it roar.”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“I loved these songs and could still hear them in my head long after and into the next day. They weren't protest songs, though, they were rebel ballads... even in a simple, melodic wooing ballad there'd be rebellion waiting around the corner. You couldn't escape it. There were songs like that in my repertoire, too, where something lovely was suddenly upturned, but in stead of rebellion showing up it would be death itself, the Grim Reaper. Rebellion spoke to me louder. The rebel was alive and well, romantic and honorable. The Grim Reaper wasn't like that.”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet? We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it Lights flicker from the opposite loft In this room the heat pipes just cough The country music station plays soft But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off Just Louise and her lover so entwined And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind”

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Book:Bob Dylan - Greatest Hits Volume 2: Song Tab Edition
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“The dominant myth of the day seemed to be that anybody could do anything, even go to the moon. You could do whatever you wanted -in the ads and in the articles, ignore your limitations, defy them. If you were an indecisive person, you could become a leader and wear lederhosen. If you were a housewife, you could become a glamour girl with rhinestone sunglasses. Are you slow witted? No worries -you can be an intellectual genius. If you're old, you can be young. Anything was possible. It was almost like a war against the self.”

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Author:Bob Dylan
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“I’m happy to just be able to come across things. I don’t need to be happy. Happiness is a kind of cheap word. Let’s face it, I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something. I would commit suicide. I would shoot myself in the brain if things got bad. I would jump from a window…you know, I can think about death openly. It’s nothing to fear. It’s nothing sacred. I’ve seen so many people die. Life’s not sacred either”

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Book:The Essential Interviews
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“Balzac was pretty funny. His philosophy is plain and simple, says basically that pure materialism is a recipe for madness. The only true knowledge for Balzac seems to be in superstition. Everything is subject to analysis. Horde your energy. That’s the secret of life. You can learn a lot from Mr. B. It’s funny to have him as a companion. He wears a monk’s robe and drinks endless cups of coffee. Too much sleep clogs up his mind. One of his teeth falls out, and he says, “What does this mean?” He questions everything. His clothes catch fire on a candle. He wonders if fire is a good sign. Balzac is hilarious.”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“I had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren't for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren't friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn't come gently to the shore. I guess you could say they weren't commercial. Not only that, my style was too erratic and hard to pigeonhole for the radio, and songs, to me, were more important that just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic. Greil Marcus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call it "the invisible republic." Whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. i just thought of popular culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it. I didn't know what age of history we were in nor what the truth of it was. Nobody bothered with that. 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 taught me that.”

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Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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