Bob Dylan - Songs Quotes

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Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true. Then again, at the same time, you're thinking that the only truth on earth is that there is no truth on it. Whatever you are saying, you're saying in a ricky-tick way. There's never time to reflect. You stitched and pressed and packed and drove, is what you did.

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
Folk songs are evasive-the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn't be comfortable with it any other way. A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who's playing and who's listening.

Bob Dylan
Well, the moral of the story, The moral of this song, Is simply that one should never be Where one does not belong. So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin', Help him with his load, And don't go mistaking Paradise For that home across the road.

Bob Dylan
A song is anything that can walk by itself.

Bob Dylan
If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs had taught me that.

Bob Dylan
I find it easy to write songs. I been writing songs for a long time and the words to the songs aren't written out just for the paper; they're written as you can read it, you dig. If you take whatever there is to the song away—the beat, the melody—I could still recite it. I see nothing wrong with songs you can't do that with either—songs that, if you took the beat and the melody away, they wouldn't stand up because they're not supposed to do that, you know. Songs are songs.

Bob Dylan
My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

Bob Dylan
Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.

Bob Dylan
You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

Bob Dylan
It's not me. It's the songs. I'm just the postman. I deliver the songs.

Bob Dylan
Like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years. Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?" So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.

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

Bob Dylan
Reporter: How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil - how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the, uh, social state in which we live today: the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.
Bob Dylan: Um... how many?
Reporter: Yes. How many?
Bob Dylan: Uh, I think there's about, uh...136.
Reporter: You say about 136, or you mean exactly 136?
Bob Dylan: Uh, it's either 136 or 142.

Bob Dylan
In writing songs I've learned as much from Cézanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.

Bob Dylan
Dylan: 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.

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

Bob Dylan
I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible.

Bob Dylan
Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect 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', And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Bob Dylan
Lay down the song you strum, And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings No voice can hope to hum.

Bob Dylan
I wanted to understand things and then be free of them. I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas. Things were too big to see all at once, like all the books in the library-everything laying around on all the tables. You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right.

Bob Dylan
I wanted just a song to sing, and there came a certain point where I couldn't sing anything. So I had to write what I wanted to sing 'cos nobody else was writing what I wanted to sing.

Bob Dylan