1,300 Quotes by Bob Dylan

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.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark as human gods aim for their mark.

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.

People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.

...how many times must the cannon balls fly Before they're forever banned?

People don't live or die, people just float.

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 was headed for the fantastic lights. No doubt about it. Could it be that I was being deceived? Not likely. I don't think I had enough imagination to be deceived; had no false hope, either. I'd come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.

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