Bob Dylan Quotations | Page 9

Don't think twice, it's alright.

I'm one too many mornings, and a thousand miles behind.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune The Titanic sails at dawn And everybody's shouting "Which Side Are You On?" And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot Fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them And fishermen hold flowers.

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

You’re a cow Give me some milk Or else go home

Cop comes down the street crazy as a loon, he throws us in jail for carrying harpoons.

Hold it, Doc, a world war passed through my brain. He said, Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane.

I fought with my twin, the enemy within.

I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin'. When she said, hey man, you crazy or somethin'?

Seven shots ring out like the ocean's pounding roar, there's seven people dead on a South Dakota farm.

Uncle fought in Vietnam and then he fought a war all by himself.

As I stepped to the stage to pick up my degree, and the locusts sang off in the distance.

Nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street.

People tell me it's a sin, to know and feel too much within.

They like to take all this money from sin, build big universities to study in, sing Amazing Grace all the way to the Swiss banks.

Reality has always had too many heads.

The executioner's face is always well hidden.

The man in the coon skin cap in the pig pen wants eleven dollar bills, you've only got ten.

Every day is the same thing out the door Feel further away then ever before Some things in life, it gets too late to learn Well, I'm lost somewhere I must have made a few bad turns

The whole world's a bottle, And life's but a dram, When the bottle gets empty, It sure ain't worth a damn.

It pays to know who your friends are but it also pays to know you ain't got any friends.

Loneliness Got a mind of its own The more people around The more you feel alone

Love is all there is, it makes the world go 'round Love and only love, it can't be denied No matter what you think about it You just won't be able to do without it Take a tip from one who's tried

How many times have you heard someone say If I had his money I'd do things my way Hmm, but little they know Hmm, it's so hard to find One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

Old New York City is a friendly old town From Washington Heights to Harlem on down There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down It's hard times in the city Livin' down in New York town

The atom bomb fueled the entire world that came after it. It showed that indiscriminate killing and indiscriminate homicide on a mass level was possible ... whereas if you look at warfare up until that point, you had to see somebody to shoot them or maim them, you had to look at them. You don't have to do that anymore.

Beyond here lies nothin' But the mountains of the past

Feel like a broke-down engine, ain't got no drivin' wheel. You all been down and lonesome, you know just how a poor man feels.

I practice a faith that's been long abandoned Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road

Well now what's the use in dreamin' You got better things to do Dreams never did work for me anyway Even when they did come true

Feeling funny in my mind, Lord I believe I'm fixing to die Well, I don't mind dying But I hate to leave my children crying Well, I look over yonder to that burying ground Look over yonder to that burying ground Sure seems lonesome, Lord, when the sun goes down

The warrior who's strength is not to fight.

When the deeds that you do don't add up to zero.

Too much of nothing can turn a man into a liar. It can cause one man to sleep on nails and another to eat fire.

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.

The battle outside raging will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.

Warlords of sorrow and queens of tomorrow will offer their heads for a prayer. You can't find no salvation, you have no expectations anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Some people are called to be a good sailor. Some people have a calling to be a good tiller of the land. Some people are called to be a good friend. You have to be the best at whatever you are called at. Whatever you do. You ought to be the best at it - highly skilled. It's about confidence, not arrogance. You have to know that you're the best whether anybody else tells you or not. And that you'll be around, in one way or another, longer than anybody else. Somewhere inside of you, you have to believe that.

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

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

There's a whole lot of people in trouble tonight From the disease of conceit Whole lot of people seeing double tonight From the disease of conceit Give ya delusions of grandeur And a evil eye Give you the idea that You're too good to die Then they bury you from your head to your feet From the disease of conceit

Oh, the inmates and the prisoners I found they were my kind And it was there inside the bars I found my peace of mind But the jails they were too crowded Institutions overflowed So they turned me loose to walk upon Life's hurried tangled road

I'm sick of giving creeps money off my soul.

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.

Can you please crawl out your window? Use your arms and your legs, it won't ruin you

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

Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.

Who am I helping, what am I breaking, what am I giving, what am I taking?

Well the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount, But nothing really matters much it's doom alone that counts.

Now the wintertime is coming The windows are filled with frost I went to tell everybody But I could not get across Well, I wanna be your lover, baby I don't wanna be your boss Don't say I never warned you When your train gets lost.

It's not dark yet But it's getting there

Don't criticize what you can't understand.

Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin' For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'.

Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's there

People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations.

If my thought-dreams could be seen/ They'd probably put my head in a guillotine.

Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift - look out out kid, they keep it all hid

[In 1951] we were also told that the Russians could be parachuting from planes over our town at any time. These were the same Russians that my uncles had fought alongside only a few years earlier. Now they had become monsters who were coming to slit our throats and incinerate us. It seemed peculiar. Living under a cloud of fear like this robs a child of his spirit. It's one thing to be afraid when someone's holding a shotgun on you, but it's another thing to be afraid of something that's just not quite real.

We all like motorcycles to some degree.

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.

You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary.

You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

A lot of people don't like the road, but it's as natural to me as breathing.

I realize I don't do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

I can't stand to see myself on television.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

I don't think I'm tangible to myself.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

I'm mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it's the only place where I'm happy.

She knows there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all.

Why wait any longer for the one you love When he’s standing in front of you

When you got nothin' / You got nothin' to lose.

Done laid around, done stayed around This old town too long And it seems like I've got to travel on

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

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.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

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.

Don't get up gentlemen. I'm only passing through!

Suddenly I found you and the spirit in me sings, Don't have to look no further, You're the soul of many things.

with her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls ...

That's another way of writing a song, of course. Just talking to somebody that ain't there. That's the best way. That's the truest way. Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me, it's something to strive after.

The Duke [John Wayne] was a massive figure. He looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn't seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

All right, I'll take a chance. I will fall in love with you. If i'm a fool you can have the night, you can have the morning too. Can you cook and sew. make flowers grow. Do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all or is your love in vain?

We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it

You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows. Don't follow leaders watch the parkin' meters.

Up on Housing Project Hill It's either fortune or fame You must pick one or the other Though neither of them are to be what they claim

When asked what his songs were about: Some are about 10 minutes long, others are about 5 or 6.

Blame it on a simple twist of fate.

Twenty years of schoolin' / And they put you on the day shift.

Some people have no hope, some people want to be like you, you know? Best to be yourself

Both these girls . . . brought out the poet in me.

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!

You're basically putting it out through a corporation regardless . . . How you get it out is really immaterial.

The beginning was there in Minnesota. But that was the beginning before the beginning. I don't know how I come to songs. I just go ahead and do it. I'm just sort of trying to find a place to pound my nails.

Everybody is even making love or else expecting rain

A person is a success if they get up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility thatcomes with his freedom.