Bob dylan quotes

Dealing with my own life takes priority over other people dealing with my life.

If you don't believe there's a price for this sweet paradise, just remind me to show you the scars.

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

I've always been the kind of person that doesn't like to trespass, but sometimes you just find yourself over the line.

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.

If I lived my life by what others were thinkin', the heart inside me would've died.

You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.

DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about WILL COME TRUE. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside.

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.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

I was born a long way from where I belong and I am on my way home.

They asked me for some collateral and I pulled down my pants.

Happiness is not on my list of priorities. I just deal with day-to-day things. If I'm happy, I'm happy – and if I'm not, I don't know the difference... Knowing that you are the person you were put on this earth to be – that's much more important than just being happy.

Peace is the time it takes to reload your rifle.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

the only thing i knew how to do was to keep on keeping on

An artist is always in the state of becoming.

Don't Ask Me Nothing About Nothing, I Just Might Tell You the Truth

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

Music attracts the angels in the universe.

I've never been able to understand the seriousness of it all, the seriousness of pride. People talk, act, live as if they're never going to die. And what do they leave behind? Nothing. Nothing but a mask.

All that foreign oil controlling American soil.

Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with.

Your mind is a your temple, keep it beautiful and free. Don't let an egg get laid in it by something you can't see.

Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.

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.

God, I'm glad I'm not me.

You get older. You start having hopes for other people rather than yourself.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

I make my stand and remain as I am, and bid farewell and not give a damn.

Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game.

You're going to die. You're going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we're just going to be gone. The world's going to go on without us. All right, now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself, you decide for yourself.

every pleasure's got an edge of pain, pay your ticket and don't complain

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way.

Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.

For whose sake did you live, for whose sake did you die? Forgive me, baby, for what I didn't do.

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 think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

I believe that instinct is what makes a genius a genius.

People are crazy and times are strange ... I used to care but things have changed

I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.

You'll never be greater than yourself.

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.

The corporations have taken over. Even in the recording studio. Actually, the corporate companies have taken over American life most everywhere. Go coast to coast and you will see people wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food. Everything is processed.

All the money you made will never buy back your soul.

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

It's not important what other people call you. If you yourself know you're a fake, that's tougher to live with.

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.

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else.

Sometimes the silence can be like thunder.

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?

He not busy being born is busy dying.

If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.

The purpose of music is to elevate the spirit and inspire. Not to help push some product down your throat. It puts you in tune with your own existence. Sometimes you really don't know how you feel, but really good music can define how you feel... someone who's telling me where he's been that I haven't and what it's like there - somebody whose life I can feel.

Frank [Sinatra] sang to you, not at you, like so many pop singers today. Even singers of standards. I never wanted to be a singer that sings at somebody. I've always wanted to sing to somebody. I would have gotten that subliminally from Frank many years ago. Hank Williams did that, too. He sang to you.

Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore.

You always got to be prepared but you never know for what.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

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.

If you don't underestimate me, I won't underestimate you.

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

Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can't sing, I call a poem.

Never make it perfect.

You need something to open up a new door, to show you something you seen before but overlooked a hundred times or more

I'll remember you. When I've forgotten all the rest.You to me were true. You to me were the best.

Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than those who are most content.

May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong, may you stay forever young.

Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn't work.

Don't criticize what you can't understand.

You can't be wise and in love at the same time.

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.

Now, each of us has his own special gift And you know this was meant to be true. And if you don't underestimate me I won't underestimate you.

Sometimes you just have to bite your upper lip and put sunglasses on.

I'm sittin' on my watch so I can be on time.

There are things I could say. But I don't.

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

Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else.

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety, you fight for the throne and you travel alone.

If there's an original thought out there, I could use one right now.

People have a hard time accepting anything that overwhelms them.

Everything passes, Everything changes, Just do what you think you should do.

Some times I think this whole world Is one big prison yeard Some of us are prisoners The rest of us are guards

How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see?

Don't matter how much money you got, there's only two kinds of people: there's saved people and there's lost people.

I just don't hear anyone else making the music I'm making in my head, so I'll have to do it myself.

Steal a little and they throw you in jail Steal a lot and they make you king.

What looks large from a distance, close up ain’t never that big.

Half of the people can be part right all of the time, Some of the people can be all right part of the time. I think Abraham Lincoln said that. 'I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,' I said that.

We have never arrived. We are in a constant state of becoming.

There are those who worship loneliness, I'm not one of them In this age of fiberglass I'm searching for a gem The crystal ball up on the wall hasn't shown me nothing yet I've paid the price of solitude, but at last I'm out of debt

If you need somebody you can trust, trust yourself

You have to know that you're the best whether anybody else tells you that 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.

A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.

Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's AT somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming. And, as long as you can stay in that realm you'll sort of be alright.

Art can lead you to God. I think that's the purpose of everything. If it's not doing that, what's it doing? It's leading you the other way. It's certainly not leading you nowhere.

There is nothing so stable as change.

The picture you have in your mind of what you're about will come true.

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.

I kinda live where I find myself.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

There must be some kind of way out of here,' said the joker to the thief.

A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness.

Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.

No reason to get excited,' the thief, he kindly spoke, There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.

They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.

I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.

Well, you always know who you are. I just don't know who I'm gonna become.

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 that 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.

A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Happiness is a state of bliss. Just because you're satisfied one moment - saying yes, it's a good meal, makes me happy - well, that's not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Time is your soul mate. Children are happy. But they haven't really experienced ups and downs yet. I'm not exactly sure what happiness even means. I don't know if I personally could define it.

What drives me to you, drives me insane.

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

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.

Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Really, time is your soul mate.

I fought with my twin, the enemy within.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there's some kind of change.

Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be.

There's a wall between you and what you want and you got to leap it.

Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb.

The purpose of art is to stop time.