Dylan Quotes - Page 15

• I always want to keep things unwritten. I'm inspired by Bob Dylan, who's kept evolving and changing his sound. I think that's what you should do as an artist. Why be comfortable?

  Lykke Li

  Artist, Thinking, Sound

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I think, especially among the New York intelligentsia at that time, that there was a reason Bob Dylan went to New York to happen, because there was a culture developed there around the ideas of civil rights, around the idea of democracy growing out of Emerson and Thoreau, these ideas of the fanfare for the common man.

  T Bone Burnett

  New York, Men, Thinking

  "T Bone Burnett on the Making of 'Inside Llewyn Davis'". Interview with Hilary Hughes, www.esquire.com. November 20, 2013.

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• Some artists respond to critics' questions about their art. I think Bob Dylan would alwys refuse to respond to questions of that sort, he always has.

  Richard F. Thomas

  Art, Thinking, Bob

  Source: projects.iq.harvard.edu

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• Bob Dylan tells interviewers what he wants to tell them, not what they necessarily want to know. His responses are really part of the art, and often have a relationship to the songs that have just come out or are about to come out.

  Richard F. Thomas

  Song, Art, Bob

  Source: projects.iq.harvard.edu

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• Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate. A new fact so shocking that even the year's most notable deaths have not outdone it for the volume (in both senses) of instant reaction; so divisive, it makes Brexit, the Labour leadership and the US Presidential election seem lesser ruptures.

  David Bennun

  Years, Presidential, Rupture

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The Yeas are relatively uniform. They view [Bob] Dylan as one of the greatest artists of his or any era, who deserves to be taken as seriously as any litterateur. Where they vary is in some cases not even accepting the distinction: Dylan in their eyes is a literary titan, and the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature is simply official affirmation of what they already knew.

  David Bennun

  Taken, Eye, Artist

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The general sentiment among the Yeas is, no accolade is too high for their man; and the Nobel being, literally, the gold standard among prizes, it is surely his [Bob Dylan] due.

  David Bennun

  Men, Gold, Bob

  Source: thequietus.com

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• First of all, there are those who simply don't care for [Bob] Dylan, or at least, don't think he's that great. Some of the former sound very much as if they are afflicted with the kind of contrarianism inevitably bred by cultural orthodoxy - Dylan is overwhelmingly rated a giant and a marvel, the acclamation of whom they feel to be de rigueur; and rather than judge for themselves, they embrace the opposite view.

  David Bennun

  Thinking, Views, Opposites

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Plenty more of the Nays sound perfectly sincere, though. They may genuinely dislike [Bob] Dylan; they may even enjoy or admire him, but just don't think he's all that. Fair enough. The reaction of such folk seems to be chiefly amazement tinged with befuddlement: they've given him what? You're kidding me.

  David Bennun

  Thinking, Sound, May

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The [Nobel] prize is for literature.[Bob] Dylan is a songwriter. Here is where the argument starts to get interesting, because here is where it is no longer a question of either cultural orthodoxy or personal taste.

  David Bennun

  Interesting, Literature, Bob

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I have seen quite a few folk whom I know to be both fair minded and, as it happens,[Bob] Dylan fans, take up cudgels for this position. To them, it's not necessarily that Dylan doesn't merit the highest honour. It's that he doesn't merit this specific highest honour [Nobel prize], in the way a champion pole vaulter shouldn't be given a medal for the long jump. It is in this group that the Wahey!s are mainly to be found, firing off jests, or mock solemnly reciting Dylan's sillier lyrics as if these are entirely representative of his oeuvre.

  David Bennun

  Long, Champion, Fans

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The question now becomes about defining your terms. What is literature? Unless we allow it to encompass the oral tradition from which it grew, which means taking it back to Homer and beyond, it demands the written word - poetry and prose. [Bob] Dylan is no slouch at the written word, both in its own right, and transcribed from his lyrics, which have often been acclaimed as poetry and may well stand up as such. But that is not his métier.

  David Bennun

  Mean, Oral Tradition, Literature

  Source: thequietus.com

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• [Bob Dylan] is principally a recording artist, and if he weren't, it is unthinkable he would have had such an impact. He is to be heard first and read second. Well, what about plays, you could reasonably ask. Is [William] Shakespeare not great literature? Yes, obviously: but his work is great literature even to those who have never known it performed. The same is evidently not true of Dylan.

  David Bennun

  Artist, Impact, Play

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Without music, there is not the faintest chance [Bob Dylan] words would now be garlanded as they are.

  David Bennun

  Bob, Chance, Without Music

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Lyrics should not need to stand on their own; many of [Bob] Dylan's do, but in common with other great lyricists, he has written plenty that falters on the page but soars in song.

  David Bennun

  Song, Needs, Bob

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The same is true of ranking him thus against any work of literature. [Bob Dylan] has been made, through no fault of his own, the object of odious tokenism.

  David Bennun

  Literature, Tokenism, Bob

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Funny thing about Bob Dylan, the newest Nobel laureate in literature: He's been a master of self-invention for more than 50 years, creating personae, wearing them like masks, and then discarding them as soon as they grew too familiar.

  Jay Michaelson

  Self, Years, Funny Things

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• I suspect many readers might associate [Bob Dylan] with one of the shortest phases of his career, the time from 1963 to '65 when he wrote his most famous "protest songs," like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin.'"

  Jay Michaelson

  Song, Wind, Careers

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• [Bob] Dylan would cut out phrases from magazines and then paste them together.

  Jay Michaelson

  Cutting, Together, Phrases

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• I haven't been reading anything on tour so far, I haven't had a minute. Any moment that I've had recently on the tour has been completely sleeping. But before I left home I was reading Dylan Thomas' book of collected works of poetry. I read a lot of poetry.

  Carla Azar

  Book, Reading, Sleep

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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• A brilliant 1989 album, Oh Mercy; some career retrospectives; and two albums of American folk songs, with just Bob Dylan and his guitar and harmonica. All that culminated in the Grammy-winning comeback album, Time Out of Mind (1997). Once again, just as Dylan seemed to be out of it, he was back at the top of his game.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Winning, Games

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Bob Dylan was again an entirely new person - this time old, craggy, cynical, and world-weary, as in "Not Dark Yet".

  Bob Dylan

  Dark, Cynical, World

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Unlike many Sixties rockers,[Bob] Dylan sang about getting old, about broken dreams. His return to roots music pointed the way for many of his contemporaries to forsake trying to sound 'current' and to instead make music that would stand the test of time.

  Jay Michaelson

  Dream, Roots, Broken

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Weirdly, by the way,[Bob] Dylan also managed to write several beautiful love songs, like "To Make You Feel My Love" (covered by Adele, Garth Brooks, Billy Joel, and who knows who else) and "Most of the Time." Go figure.

  Jay Michaelson

  Beautiful, Song, Writing

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• The most recent incarnation of [Bob] Dylan has been the traveling journeyman/ charlatan who sings roots music, snarls dark lyrics that make "All Along the Watchtower" sound like a Disney tune, hosts an old-school radio show, and turns up in some unusual places, like ads for Chrysler and Victoria's Secret.

  Jay Michaelson

  School, Dark, Roots

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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