Quote collection
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"My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it...In writing songs I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie...It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs...I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet."
"Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb."
"All right, I'll take a chance. I will fall in love with you. If i'm a fool you can have the night, you can have the morning too. Can you cook and sew. make flowers grow. Do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all or is your love in vain?"
"How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free."
"I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most."
"They can't hurt me. Sure, they can crush you and kill you. They can lay you out on 42nd and Broadway and put hoses on you and flush you in the sewers and put you on the subway and carry you out to Coney island and bury you on the Ferris wheel. But I refuse to sit here and worry about dying."
"I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do."
"I fought with my twin, the enemy within."
"Come senators, congressmen, Please heed the call, Don't stand in the doorway, Don't block up the hall, For he that gets hurt, Will be he who has stalled, The battle outside ragin', Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, For the times they are a-changin'..."
"What looks large from a distance, close up ain’t never that big."
"The inmates and prisoners, I found they were my kind, and it was there inside the bars I found my peace of mind."
"I feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet, putting her in a wheel-barrow and wheeling her down the street."
"It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs. When I first heard Elvis' voice, I knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody ... hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway. People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas."
"I dug it, New York City, all-the streets and the snows and the starving and the five-flight walkups and sleeping in rooms with ten people. I dug the trains and the shadows, the way I dug ore mines and coal mines. I just jumped right to the bottom of New York."
"Suddenly I found you and the spirit in me sings, Don't have to look no further, You're the soul of many things."
"This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway."
"When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks."
"Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with."
"Music can save people, but it can't in the commercial way it's being used. It's just too much. It's pollution."
"Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said, Bob, why are you resisting me? I said, I'm not resisting you! He said, You gonna follow me? I said, I've never thought about that before! He said, When you're not following me, you're resisting me."