Quote collection
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"In my childhood everything you heard, you could imagine what it looked like. Even singers that I would hear on the radio, I couldn't see what they looked like, so I imagined what they looked like. What they were wearing. What their movements were. Gene Vincent? When I first pictured him, he was a tall, lanky blond-haired guy."
"Hold it, Doc, a world war passed through my brain. He said, Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane."
"Why Nicolas Sarkozy is the head of France, [he is] warm and extremely likeable."
"She makes love just like a woman."
"An artist has got to be constantly in a state of becoming."
"Get jailed, jump bail, join the Army if you fail."
"I'd been going though his trash. He knocked me down. I was glad to see him, even though he was banging my head against the sidewalk. Afterwards these bums come over and say, 'Did he get much money?' I say, 'Money'? That was Bob Dylan."
"...how many times must the cannon balls fly Before they're forever banned?"
"People do whatever they want to do, y'know."
"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."
"You travel the world, you go see different things. I like to see Shakespeare plays, so I'll go - I mean, even if it's in a different language. I don't care, I just like Shakespeare, you know. I've seen Othello and Hamlet and Merchant of Venice over the years, and some versions are better than others. Way better. It's like hearing a bad version of a song. But then somewhere else, somebody has a great version."
"Can you please crawl out your window? Use your arms and your legs, it won't ruin you"
"My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip, my toes to numb to step, wait only for my boot heels to be wandering."
"Once you think you know the song, then you have go and see how other people have done it."
"Old New York City is a friendly old town From Washington Heights to Harlem on down There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down It's hard times in the city Livin' down in New York town"
"I'm gonna spare the defeated. I'm gonna tame the proud."
"I always thought the best kind of sunglasses are the motorcycle helmets with the black plastic masks on them. That way, nobody can recognize the back of your head either."
"One night around that time, at Hammersmith, Bob Dylan was about to go into [his 1963 classic] 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright.He said, 'Hey, Bucky! Play mandolin on this.' I am not really a mandolin player; I could only play in certain keys. Halfway through, he stops the band, turns to the audience and points to me. He says: 'He isn't playing, he's miming.' And then: 'Should I fire him?' The whole audience yells."
"People talk about Frank Sinatra all the time - and they should talk about Frank - but he had the greatest arrangers. They worked for him in a different kind of way than they worked for other people. They gave him arrangements that are just sublime on every level. And he, of course, could match that because he had this ability to get inside of the song in a sort of a conversational way. Frank sang to you, not at you, like so many pop singers today. Even singers of standards."
"Let me feel your love one more time before I abandon it."