Bob Dylan Quotes & Sayings

When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to loose. — Bob Dylan

I ain't saying you treated me unkind you could've done better, but I don't mind. You just kinda wasted my precious time. But don't think twice, it's alright. — Bob Dylan

In ceremonies of the horsemen, even the pawn must hold a grudge. — Bob Dylan

Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape — Bob Dylan

We are so scared of losing everything that doesn't mean anything. — Bob Dylan

For them that think death's honesty won't fall upon them naturally life sometimes must get lonely. — Bob Dylan

In the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales for the disrobed faceless forms of no position. Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts - all down in taken-for-granted situations. Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute, and the mistreated mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute, for the misdemeanor outlaw, chained an' cheated by pursuit. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. — Bob Dylan

The rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame, preacherman seeks the same, who'll get there first is uncertain. — Bob Dylan

The truth is far from you, so you know you got to lie. Then you're all the time defending what you can never justify. — Bob Dylan

I count the years and I shed no tears; I'm blinded to what might have been. Nature's voice makes my heart rejoice; play me the wild song of the wind. — Bob Dylan

Art is a never-ending dance of illusions. — Bob Dylan

A lot of people don't have much food on their table. But they got a lot of forks 'n knives. And they got to cut somethin'. — Bob Dylan

The government's not going to create jobs. It doesn't have to. People have to create jobs ... — Bob Dylan

Life is sad, life is a bust, all you can do is do what you must. — Bob Dylan

I hate myself for loving you and the weakness that it showed. You were just a painted face on a trip down to suicide road. — Bob Dylan

People disagreeing everywhere you look makes you wanna stop and read a book. — Bob Dylan

I'm glad I'm not me — Bob Dylan

Well, my daddy, he didn't leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say, son, he said, he say, you know it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you and if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways. — Bob Dylan

I'm more of an adventurous type than a relationship type. — Bob Dylan

Sometimes I'm thinkin' I'm Too high to fall Other times I'm thinkin' I'm So low I don't know If I can come up at all — Bob Dylan

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. — Bob Dylan

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 theres some kind of change. — Bob Dylan

A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter. — Bob Dylan

Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you. — Bob Dylan

My grandfather was a duck trapper
He could do it with just dragnets and ropes
My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth
I don't know if they had any dreams or hopes
I had 'em once though, I suppose, to go along
With all the ring-dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas eves
I left all my dreams and hopes
Buried under tobacco leaves — Bob Dylan

May you stay Forever Young — Bob Dylan

I'm just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon. — Bob Dylan

Don't criticize what you can't understand. — Bob Dylan

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. — Bob Dylan

had learned songs — Bob Dylan

You'll find out when you reach the top, you're on the bottom. — Bob Dylan

I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans. — Bob Dylan

There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. — Bob Dylan

You're better than no one and no one is better than you. — Bob Dylan

Even I don't know what I'm saying most of the time. — Bob Dylan

The hollow horn plays wasted words, proves to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying. — Bob Dylan

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

I dug it, New York City, all-the streets and the snows and the starving and the five-flight walkups and sleeping in rooms with ten people. I dug the trains and the shadows, the way I dug ore mines and coal mines. I just jumped right to the bottom of New York. — Bob Dylan

And if you don't underestimate me, I won't underestimate you. — Bob Dylan

They kill people here who stand up for their rights The system's just too damned corrupt It's always the same, the name of the game Is who do you know higher up — Bob Dylan

Satan will give you a little taste, then he'll move in with rapid speed. — Bob Dylan

I'm not a folk-singer. I just sing a certain place. — Bob Dylan

I started writing songs after I heard Hank Williams. — Bob Dylan

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. — Bob Dylan

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

You will find God in the church of your choice. — Bob Dylan

You don't write a song to sit there on a page. You write it to sing it. — Bob Dylan

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

You've got to lose your passion for dumbness. — Bob Dylan

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, they're drinking, thinking that they got it made. Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things, but you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it, babe. — Bob Dylan

You might be a rock and roll addict prancing on the stage. You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage. — Bob Dylan

Nothing can affect my voice, it's so bad. — Bob Dylan

Every day your memory grows dimmer - it doesn't haunt me like it did before. — Bob Dylan

Sometimes you get out from behind the wheel and let someone else step on the gas. — Bob Dylan

Can't keep track of it no more, son's becoming husbands to their mothers, and old men turning your daughters into whores. — Bob Dylan

I'm speaking for all of us. I'm the spokesman for a generation. — Bob Dylan

Whatever colors you have in your mind, I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine. — Bob Dylan

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever. — Bob Dylan

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

Sailin' 'round the world in a dirty gondola
Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola! — Bob Dylan

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

The times are a-changing and if we don't we will sink like a stone. — Bob Dylan

Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. — Bob Dylan

I had stood outside of Poe's house on 3rd street, too, and had done the same thing, staring mournfully up at the windows. The city was like some uncarved block without any name or shape and it showed no favoritism. Everything was always new, always changing. It was never the same old crowd upon the streets. — Bob Dylan

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me
You'll never know the hurt I suffer nor the pain I rise above
And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or you kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry. — Bob Dylan

You don't count the dead, when god's on your side. — Bob Dylan

Got no religion. Tried a bunch of different religions. The churches are divided. Can't make up their minds and neither can I. — Bob Dylan

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

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

Gold will never free your father, the price, my dear, is you instead. — Bob Dylan

Just a reminder, if you tell anyone about what happened with Jonah last night, I'll destroy all of my writing and never play music again. — Bob Dylan

You want to know about creativity? Just go out and buy that book Imagine by Jonah Lehrer. It's only $29.00 in hardcover. — Bob Dylan

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

with her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls ... — Bob Dylan

Folk music is a bunch of fat people. — Bob Dylan

Don't forget to support your public library. — Bob Dylan

It's not dark yet But it's getting there — Bob Dylan

On the stone that remains carved next to his name, his epitaph plain, only a pawn in their game. — Bob Dylan

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

A lot of people from the press want to talk to me, but they never do. — Bob Dylan

My range is limited. — Bob Dylan

And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin — Bob Dylan

Really the truth is just a plain picture. A plain picture of, let's say, a tramp vomiting in the sewere. You know, and next door to the picture Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. C. W. Jones on the subway going to work. You know, any kind of picture. Just make a collage of pictures. — Bob Dylan

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

Music can save people, but it can't in the commercial way it's being used. It's just too much. It's pollution. — Bob Dylan

If you're looking to get silly, you better go back to from where you came. because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same. — Bob Dylan

Charity is suppose to cover up for a multitude of sins. — Bob Dylan

If you like someone's work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years. — Bob Dylan

The people in my songs are all me. — Bob Dylan

To live outside the law you must be honest. — Bob Dylan

She had bullets in her eyes and they fired. — Bob Dylan

The only person you have to think about lying twice to is either yourself or to God. The press isn't either of them. And I just figured they're irrelevant. — Bob Dylan

With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,
Who among them would try to impress you?
-Bob Dylan, "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" (1966) — Bob Dylan

Don't wanna marry nobody, if they're already married. — Bob Dylan

Jezebel the nun, who violently knits ... — Bob Dylan

Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular. — Bob Dylan

It wouldn't kill you to stay the night anyway. — Bob Dylan

I met a young man who was wounded in love, I met another man who was wounded in hatred. — Bob Dylan

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth.
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth. — Bob Dylan

The walls of pride are high and wide, can't see over to the other side. — Bob Dylan