01c. 1941 ADInside the museums, | Infinity goes up on trial | Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a whileBob Dylan / quote ↗
02c. 1941 ADWhat was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening - all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn't one big joke.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
03c. 1941 ADBut, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years.Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?"So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
05c. 1941 ADYet there’s no one to beat you | No one t’ defeat you | ’Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling badBob Dylan / quote ↗
06c. 1941 ADI’m happy to just be able to come across things. I don’t need to be happy. Happiness is a kind of cheap word. Let’s face it, I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something. I would commit suicide. I would shoot myself in the brain if things got bad. I would jump from a window…you know, I can think about death openly. It’s nothing to fear. It’s nothing sacred. I’ve seen so many people die. Life’s not sacred eitherBob Dylan / quote ↗
07c. 1941 ADI had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren't for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren't friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn't come gently to the shore. I guess you could say they weren't commercial.Not only that, my style was too erratic and hard to pigeonhole for the radio, and songs, to me, were more important that just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic. Greil Marcus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call it "the invisible republic."Whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. i just thought of popular culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.I didn't know what age of history we were in nor what the truth of it was. Nobody bothered with that. If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs taught me that.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
08c. 1941 ADSome people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
10c. 1941 ADPeople are crazy and times are strangeI'm locked in tight, I'm out of rangeI used to care, but things have changedBob Dylan / quote ↗
11c. 1941 ADCouldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
12c. 1941 ADBe grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want." -Bob Dylan's DadBob Dylan / quote ↗
13c. 1941 ADCome writers and criticsWho prophesize with your penAnd keep your eyes wideThe chance won't come againAnd don't speak too soonFor the wheel's still in spinAnd there's no tellin' whoThat it's namin'For the loser nowWill be later to winFor the times they are a-changin'.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
14c. 1941 ADA 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.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
16c. 1941 ADMy grandfather was a duck trapperHe could do it with just dragnets and ropesMy grandmother could sew new dresses out of old clothI don't know if they had any dreams or hopesI had 'em once though, I suppose, to go alongWith all the ring-dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas evesI left all my dreams and hopesBuried under tobacco leavesBob Dylan / quote ↗
18c. 1941 ADPeople are crazy and times are strange,I'm locked in tightI'm out of range,I use to carebut things have changed.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
21c. 1941 AD..my father was the best man in the world and probably worth a hundred of me, but he didn't understand me. The town he lived in and the town I lived in were not the same.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
22c. 1941 ADBeing noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.Bob Dylan / quote ↗
24c. 1941 ADNo martyr is among ye now | Whom you can call your own | So go on your way accordingly | But know you’re not alone.Bob Dylan / quote ↗