Bob Dylan Quotes

“I do know what my songs are about. Playboy: And what’s that? Dylan: Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve. Playboy: Can’t you be a bit more informative? Dylan: Nope.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
But goodbye’s too good a word, gal
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right”
― Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“Playboy: Do you think it’s pointless to dedicate yourself to the cause of peace and racial equality? Dylan: Not pointless to dedicate yourself to peace and racial equality, but rather, it’s pointless to dedicate yourself to the cause; that’s really pointless. That’s very unknowing. To say “cause of peace” is just like saying “hunk of butter.” I mean, how can you listen to anybody who wants you to believe he’s dedicated to the hunk and not to the butter? People who can’t conceive of how others hurt, they’re trying to change the world. They’re all afraid to admit that they don’t really know each other. They’ll all probably be here long after we’ve gone, and we’ll give birth to new ones. But they themselves—I don’t think they’ll give birth to anything. Playboy:”
― Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“A saint is a person who gives of himself totally and freely, without strings. He is neither deaf nor blind. And yet he’s both. He’s the master of his own reality, the voice of simplicity. The trick is to stay away from mirror images. The only true mirrors are puddles of water.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“I am interested in all aspects of life. Revelations and realizations. Lucid thought that can be translated into songs, analogies, new information. I am better at it now. Not really written yet anything to make me stop writing. Like, I haven’t come to the place that Rimbaud came to when he decided to stop writing and run guns in Africa.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“The heartbeat. Have you ever lain with somebody when your hearts were beating in the same rhythm? That’s true love. A man and a woman who lie down with their hearts beating together are truly lucky. Then you’ve truly been in love, m’ boy. Yeah, that’s true love. You might see that person once a month, once a year, maybe once a lifetime, but you have the guarantee your lives are going to be in rhythm. That’s all you need.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“Henry Miller said it: The role of an artist is to inoculate the world with disillusionment.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“Don’t forget—I’m not a myth to myself. Only to others. If others didn’t create that myth of Bob Dylan, there would be no myth of Bob Dylan in”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“Death don’t come knocking at the door. It’s there in the morning when you wake up.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“Just by our being and acting alive, we succeed. You fail only when you let death creep in and take over a part of your life that should be alive.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“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.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“I haven’t read that much of Dylan Thomas. It’s a common thing to change your name. It isn’t that incredible. Many people do it. People change their town, change their country. New appearance, new mannerisms. Some people have many names. I wouldn’t pick a name unless I thought I was that person. Sometimes you are held back by your name. Sometimes there are advantages to having a certain name. Names are labels so we can refer to one another. But deep inside us we don’t have a name. We have no name. I just chose that name and it stuck.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“There doesn’t seem to be any tomorrow. Every time I wake up, no matter in what position, it’s always been today.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“I wouldn’t think twice about giving a starving man a cigarette. But I’m not a shepherd. And I’m not about to save anybody from fate, which I know nothing about.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I’m in a card game. Then I’m in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a “before” in a Charles Atlas “before and after” ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy—he ain’t so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I’m in Omaha. It’s so cold there, by this time I’m robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain’t much to look at, but who’s built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything’s going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“I’m not interested in myself as a performer. Performers are people who perform for other people. Unlike actors, I know what I’m saying.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“Art, if there is such a thing, is in the bathrooms; everybody knows that. To go to an art-gallery thing where you get free milk and doughnuts and where there is a rock-’n’-roll band playing: That’s just a status affair. I’m not putting it down, mind you; but I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. I think museums are vulgar.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)

“Statistics measure quantity, not quality. The people in the statistics are people who are very bored.”
― Playboy, Bob Dylan: The Playboy Interviews (Singles Classic)