Top 105 Quotes about 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

My expectations for myself were never high. I had a very unusual way of writing songs and of thinking about music. I wasn’t at all like Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel. I was completely different – I didn’t have a David Geffen at my side.

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

When I was in college, being a magician was not the classiest thing to be. It was like being a folk singer before Bob Dylan.

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 was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

To us, there was Bob Dylan, and there was dad. As for what he meant to other people, that was never glorified in our house. There were no accolades there, no gold records.

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

The biggest influence? I’ve had several at different times – but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.

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.

I came along with that crowd of singer-songwriters who were able to make their own statements in such a personal way that it changed the industry: Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Sly and the Family Stone.

I loved working with Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

The most memorable moment was playing drums with Bob Dylan.

When I first heard Bob Dylan, I’ll be honest, I didn’t like him. But I was shallow of mind and didn’t understand the poetry. I just judged him on his singing and his guitar playing.

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.

My secret heroes were Joe Morello, Ray Charles – who is, in my opinion, the most dominant figure in musical history in the 21st century – and Frank Sinatra. Those are my heroes. And as a writer, when Bob Dylan came along, it was a miracle because he gave us all permission to say anything!

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 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.’

In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music – you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards – they didn’t get any money at first. They were all broke.

I grew up on, and kind of came of age, during the grunge movement and was introduced to Neil Young and Bob Dylan and grew up on that path.

I love Bob Dylan. Who doesn’t? He tapped into some kind of vein and it keeps on keeping on. There’s nobody like him. He’s unique, and just… way out cool.

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.

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

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.

We soaked up everything from Beethoven to Chopin to Jimi Hendrix to Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.

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

Bob Dylan is as influential as any artist that there has been.

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.

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

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