Top 135 Quotes about Bob Dylan

I would say that Bob Dylan is as interested in money as any person I’ve known in my life. That’s just the truth.

You could live in Winnipeg a thousand years and not meet Ringo, Paul McCartney, or Bob Dylan.

You listen to Bob Dylan and you can’t help but think of the 60s, it’s very relational and if artists are true artists and not just mere musicians they need to be truthful because the music doesn’t come from them it comes from the universe and it’s to be shared. At best, we’re skilled presenters, and I say that at best.

Totalitarians always want to kill culture. But imagine life without football, Faulkner, or Bob Dylan. It’s not life.

Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent ‘Basement Tapes’ will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson‘s reasons for the destruction of the tapes for ‘Smile.’

I didn’t sound anything like Capote at the screen test. It was more like Bob Dylan. In his early years. With the flu.

I used to write on pads with a pen but had trouble reading the words the next day. Years later, Bob Dylan taught me to just write and write on a laptop computer. Then I’d print that out. When it was time to write a song, I’d go through the pages and sing melodies to words that moved me.

Bob Dylan has a way with words that simply blows me away. When he forgets his lyrics he just makes up new ones on the spot, that is what I called talented!

Joaquin Sabina is one of my favorites. He’s like a legend. He’s like our Bob Dylan, or our Bruce Springsteen. He’s one of the most talented writers of our Latin music.

There’s that Bob Dylan quote: ‘He who‘s not busy being born is busy dying.’ That’s a great line. And I really believe that.

I never had this ego where I must write everything. I’m not Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan has and Einstein had their own way of perceiving the universe and translating it for us.

Music television is all about the media-oriented version of what it is to be a rock star; it’s not about what Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix were about – which included great images, sure, but they had spiritual and political and revolutionary content, too.

I’m a huge Springsteen fan, and yet if either he or Bob Dylan had to be erased from the world’s hard drive, I would save Bob Dylan’s work for sure – he’s the greater talent, and by leaps and bounds and skyscrapers and rocket blasts. But Bob Dylan is an alien to his public.

My dad was a huge Bob Dylan fan, so we listened to his music, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, and all that kind of stuff.

Judy Garland, Doris Day, and Gene Kelly were all big influences growing up from all of the films. I’m also a huge folk music fan – Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan have influenced a lot of how music can inspire change in our world.

Well, I met Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan in the space of 15 minutes. Frank Sinatra kissed me on the lips. He kissed me on the lips. And then he gave me a filterless cigarette. And then I met Bob Dylan. I came off all lightheaded and had to go sit on his dressing-room steps.

In college, I would follow Bob Dylan around, and I would show up to a concert, and he would sing some song he hadn’t sang in a long time, and it would speak to something, and I would think it had some great fateful implication.

Bob Dylan is great. I’ve been compared to him a lot. I think when people see a person on stage with a guitar they just think, ‘Bob Dylan!’

I was pretty strict in high school about who I would listen to. Musicians like Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell… who were, in my opinion, great writers. The music mattered, but it held hands with the lyrics, and the personality was, overall, unsullied.

When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that’s what other people who I admired did. That’s what Bob Dylan did, that’s what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.

When I first started fingerpicking, the first thing I learned was ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright‘ from Bob Dylan.

Ask people who know him for a description of Bob Dylan outside the prerogatives of fame and the obligations of art, and they have to stop and think; there’s just not that much left.

It’s like there’s the rest of the world, and then there’s America. Part of the reason I would really love continue to making music over here because so much of American music has inspired me, whether it’s Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen.

I don’t know if music has ever achieved anything past appealing to the people that it appeals to. If a song could stop a war, then Bob Marley and Bob Dylan songs would have stopped one or two.

I learned Neil Young songs, Bob Dylan songs and older songs. It wasn’t until I moved to Philly that I had aspirations to maybe forming a band.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a ‘poet.’ After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

I love Willie Nelson‘s ‘Phases And Stages‘; there’s so many songs from The Band and Bob Dylan that have gotten me through hard times, like ‘Tears Of Rage.’ I love Karen Dalton’s ‘In My Own Time’ and Skip James.

That’s who I wanted to be like was Bob Dylan.

I have Bob Dylan lyrics on my ribs. I’m a diehard Dylan fan, and my dad and I joke that if I ever met him, I’d have him sign his name right under my tattoo and then I’d run to the parlor to get his signature tattooed.

Bob Dylan is the Jew of all time.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

As a songwriter, oddly enough, my influences were people like Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and Buddy Holly. Some psychedelic stuff, too.

My love was Bob Dylan, but as I got older I realized a good ballad was a good ballad.

People like Howlin’ Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart – all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there’s a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

Bob Dylan, I’d say, is probably my favorite musician.

Once I’d heard ‘Modern Times‘ by Bob Dylan, it really changed the way I wanted to make records.

I listened to a lot of Bob Dylan songs to see how he works. I’ve gotten into writing story-songs.

My thing has always been that the clothing we make is kind of like music. There are always critics that don’t understand that young people can be into Bob Dylan but also into the Wu-Tang Clan and Coltrane and Social Distortion.

It’s always Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Waits for me – the big three.

I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That’s their life.

Bob Dylan was the source of pop music‘s unpredictability in the Sixties. Never as big a record-seller as commonly imagined, his importance was first aesthetic and social, and then as an influence.

I’ve had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that’s just what I’ve always liked – people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.

I listen to Radio 4 and put the iPod on shuffle. I like the randomness of, say, the Stones, then something from Nina Simone, Nick Drake or Bob Dylan.

I think Bob Dylan showed us that songs can rise to the level of literature, and he proved it over and over again. That’s why they keep trying to get him a Nobel Prize for literature: because there is no Nobel Prize for songwriting.

My musical tastes go from Zeppelin to Bob Dylan to Kanye West and Lil’ Wayne. Anything modern and progressive.

I can’t do that wonderful thing that Tom Waits and Bob Dylan do – to do imagery. I’m not good at that. I just write from the heart.

Music was so important to the culture when I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies. We just expected that Bob Dylan was going to make a great record, and it was normal. It was like, ‘Okay, here’s another great record by Bob Dylan; here’s another great record by Led Zeppelin.’

In the ’60s, I used to love rock magazines; I’d cut out pictures of Bob Dylan and John Lennon.

My dad influenced my musical taste. I grew up listening to Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones and a bunch of rock music from the ’60s. Now, instead of watching TV, I’ll play a record from start to finish.

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

I don’t care if it’s a Cole Porter song, or George Gershwin, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elton John, or you know, whoever, Bob Dylan. Great songs are great songs, and they stand the test of time, and they can be interpreted and recorded with many points of view, but yet still retain the essence of what makes them good songs.

We say, ‘Wow, look at Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Their clothes were always so cool.’ Maybe not Mick Jagger when he wore Spandex in the ’80s.

I’ve been really, really blessed. I got to perform on stage with Bob Dylan. I’ve gotten to sing with Mick Jagger.

The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn’t kick me out of his class. He turned me on to ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.’ I had picked up Dylan with ‘Bringing It All Back Home,’ and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn’t heard.

Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.

I can’t stand Bob Dylan.

‘The Big Lebowski”s soundtrack has had as much of an influence on me as the film itself. My favorite Bob Dylan song is ‘The Man in Me,’ which plays over the movie‘s opening credits as well as during the first dream sequence.

I love Mac Miller. I’m a big Drake fan. I love Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley.

I’ve grown up on Bob Dylan and all that, but there was a certain standard set up by people before 1955.

Bob Dylan is either the most public private man in the world or the most private public one. He has a reputation for being silent and reclusive; he is neither.

The most memorable moment was playing drums with Bob Dylan.

Growing up, I was a little hippie kid. I went to some good concerts… Amnesty International with Bob Dylan and Tracy Chapman… The best concert I ever went to was this one at the Cow Palace my freshman year in college on New Year‘s Eve. It was Pearl Jam opening for Nirvana opening for Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I asked Bob Dylan to paint the album cover for ‘Music from Big Pink.’ He said, ‘Yeah, let me see what I can come up with.’

I still listen to a lot of the classics from Bob Dylan and John Martin, but I love electronic music as well. I’m a big fan of an Australian DJ and producer called Flume, who I think is incredible. He should be more successful in the U.K.!

The Seventies was a golden era. Back then we had some incredible talent with bands like the Undertones, the Rolling Stones and artists like Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney.

I think I’m the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans.

The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan.

When I can focus on something like guitar or painting, I do. I started painting people I admire, like Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, Marlon Brando, Patti Smith, my girl, my kids.

Lolita’ was written at a time when we were heavily listening to more dance, electronic, and trance, and then on the flip side we were writing country-pop songs like ‘Born Bob Dylan’ or our acoustic songs, or trip-hop.

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won’t bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

After Nashville sushi and a long debate on Bob Dylan, we went into Woodland Studios at 10 pm that night for a look around, and jammed for 5 hours solid.

I think everyone mentions Bob Dylan, but he’s someone I just admire so much as a songwriter. I think people write songs, and then there’s Bob Dylan songs. He’s one step ahead of just everybody else.

Bob Dylan continues to release odd and unsettling records, and to do odd and unsettling things on stage. So the term ‘still’ seems meaningless to me. But the real answer is simple: I listen to Bob Dylan for pleasure more than I listen to anyone else for pleasure.

What I’m doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music’s always done. I’m not going to sing about ploughing, but I’ll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

When I was around 12, my heroes were Cindy Sherman and Bob Dylan and Samuel Westing from the kids’ novel ‘The Westing Game‘.

It was my love for the guitar that first got me into music and singing. Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.

When I met Bob Dylan, I was definitely impressed. This guy had come from the American folk world, but he was very schooled in poetry, too. He’d studied the Beat poets, of course. I grew up in the British bohemian scene. Dylan grew up in the American bohemian scene. So I was very pleased to meet such a guy.

I like men who are very cool but who are also so brilliant that they are almost insane. Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits – men who would be flipping burgers if they hadn’t found an outlet for their brilliant mind-sets.

I always love listening to Bob Dylan. ‘Blood on the Tracks‘ is one of my favorite albums.

My understanding of current music stopped in 2006, so I am continually inspired by music from the past. Three Dog Night, Harry Nilsson, Bob Dylan, Herman’s Hermits, Association, Eagles, Beatles, Stones, Turtles, Animals… this list goes on forever.

Growing up, I listened to a lot of American singer/songwriters, so a lot of Tom Waits, Paul Simon – also Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. And bands like Vampire Weekend.

I want to see Bob Dylan do sketch comedy. I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan.

I did a video with Mick Jagger down in Rio de Janeiro. But I played a video director, and that’s the closest I’ve gotten to directing, except Bob Dylan came and had a few meetings with me about doing a video for him.

My parents were inspired by Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas when naming me. They specifically saved this masculine name for their only girl.

For someone like me, who has grown up with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, it’s hard not to invest a lot of myself in what I do.

Bob Dylan impresses me about as much as… well, I was gonna say a slug but I like slugs.

I was really lost for a while in my teens. I was angry. But when I found music – Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell – it was a new discovery. It was a door to this other world where I wanted to be.

I’ve worked with some of the best of them. Not just directors like Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, but writers like Sam Shepard and singers like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.

When I first started singing in Paris, I sounded horrible: I was just singing to get some money to eat. And I wasn’t singing my own songs: it was Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix. Eventually, when I wrote my own music, my style just came out of my own place.

We don’t need another Woody. Even Bob Dylan knew he couldn’t be Woody Guthrie… I like Woody Guthrie fine, but I don’t need the 50th generation version of it.

We are at a crossroads in the music business: with the rise of the internet, the world we live in has changed, and the past is not coming back. But I see the glass as half-full: the internet and social networking are new avenues for the next Bob Dylan to be born on.

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.

Dave Van Ronk, for those who don’t know him – probably most don’t know – was a folk singer. He’s kind of the biggest person on the scene in 1961 in the folk revival in Greenwich Village, biggest person on the scene until Bob Dylan showed up.

Bob Dylan is someone that – I don’t care how long into the future it is – somebody will still play Bob Dylan. He will always survive.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

We didn’t have the phrase ‘style icon‘ when I was young, but I have to say, I really copied Bob Dylan when I was younger: a little bit of Bob Dylan or a lot of Bob Dylan and the French symbolist poets – I liked how they dressed – and Catholic school boys.

I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us: you don’t write the songs anyhow. So if you’re lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you’re lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this.

I think the height of ridiculousness was when I was playing Elizabeth in ‘The Golden Age‘ while preparing to start shooting ‘I’m Not There.’ I literally finished filming Elizabethan grandeur on Friday, flew to Montreal, and started being Bob Dylan on Monday.

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.

I have no doubt that if I met Bob Dylan, it would be disappointing – and annoying to him. But that’s why I like Bob Dylan.

It must be tiring being Bob Dylan for the past 50 years. People act like he’s not even human, which must be hard work. Every room he walks into just goes quiet.

By 27, Bob Dylan had already written ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’ the Beatles had released ‘Rubber Soul,’ Bruce Springsteen had recorded ‘Born to Run’ and U2 had delivered ‘The Joshua Tree.’

The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan… Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

Bob Dylan – I will listen to any of his songs over and over.

In New York, I’m around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history.

Townes Van Zandt ranks alongside Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan. He inspired so many songwriters to shoot for something that’s timeless.

In other words, I’d say the whole story of Bob Dylan is one man’s search for God. The turns and the steps he takes to find God are his business. I think he went to a study group at the Vineyard, and it created a lot of excitement.

I am a child of the ’70s, so I love classic rock – Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, and I also love Coldplay.

It sounds lonely being Bob Dylan, because Bob Dylan likes being around other Bob Dylans, and there are not many other Bob Dylans around.

And what makes Bob Dylan stories interesting is that the only person who can decide their outcome is Bob Dylan, so you never know how they’re going to go.

Bob Dylan enabled rock & roll to grow up and survive. He injected the power of language and ideas into the music.

I would say, from an all-around point of view, Bruce Springsteen is one of the two great poet lords of America, Bob Dylan, coming out of the music world, the two of them.

I was buying Bob Dylan mainly, everything I could get hold of by him.

People often ask us if we had direct influences. Honestly, just a lot of different music – not necessarily individual people. We listen to anything from Bob Dylan to Massive Attack to Aerosmith to En Vogue. We very much enjoy all that music.

Albert Grossman called my office and spoke with my partner Richard Leacock and asked if we’d be interested in making a film with his client, Bob Dylan.

I love Bob Dylan. ‘Blood on the Tracks’ is one of my top five records.

And I don’t expect anyone can bring about a revolution in the way that Bob Dylan did – and really didn’t – in the 1960s.

Bob Dylan did the first really long record – Like A Rolling Stone – I think it was four minutes.

I’m a big Bob Dylan fan. I’m also a blues geek.

If people want to talk about Bob Dylan, I can talk about that. But my dad belongs to me and four other people exclusively. I’m very protective of that. And telling people whether he was affectionate is telling people a lot. It has so little to do with me. I come up against a wall.

The only thing about rock n’ roll in my house is a couple of paintings of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan – and they were expensive, too.

At the ‘L.A. Times,’ I always wanted to write about artists I thought were meaningful. So I interviewed Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Eminem, White Stripes. And I could understand how almost everybody I interviewed had a sense of artistry.

The single biggest inspiration I have was Bob Dylan.

The people that impress me are Bob Dylan. The ones who keep working, year in and year out, and keep coming up with stuff.

One month I’ll be completely obsessed with Bob Dylan and the next Arcade Fire. I like early Elton John and David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. I listen to a lot of American bands. But I like listening to new bands, too.

Well, I love Bob Dylan, let’s make that clear. He’s one of my musical heroes.

When I was playing with Bob Dylan in, like, 1966, I was, like, 20 years old.

I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.

Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Neil Young and Bob Dylan are my main influences.

Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

If they made a movie about Bob Dylan, I would love to play a young Bob Dylan; I mean, I’ve got the wild hair.

I’ll never be Bob Dylan. He’s the master.

And you don’t want to just totally mess up the rhythm when you’re playing with Bob Dylan.