What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

You can't be wise and in love at the same time.

Chaos is a friend of mine. (December 9, 1985)

Well, what the hell is there to say? After an interviewer told him: 'They say Dylan never talks.'

I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around—the music and the ideas. (Feb. 13, 1992)

The moment when you reload your rifle. A definition of peace.

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.

Morality has nothing in common with politics.

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.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. Interview published with the Biograph album set (1985)

God, I'm glad I'm not me. Said when reading a newspaper article about himself. (1967)

What good are fans? You can't eat applause for breakfast. You can't sleep with it.

I started smoking at 11 years old an' only stopped once to catch my breath.

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

I say there're no depressed words just depressed minds.

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there's some kind of change.

I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.

Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.

There's no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They has got nothing to do with it. I'm thinking about the general people and when they get hurt. Address to the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (13 December 1963)