Quotes

“It's not easy to define poetry.” Bob Dylan

“Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now.” Bob Dylan

“My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn't possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.” Bob Dylan

“My range is limited.” Bob Dylan

“My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.” Bob Dylan

“Some formulas are too complex and I don't want anything to do with them.” Bob Dylan

“The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots.” Bob Dylan

“The people in my songs are all me.” Bob Dylan

“The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.” Bob Dylan

“What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.” Bob Dylan

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

“You call yourself what you want to call yourself.” Bob Dylan

“You can't do something forever.” Bob Dylan

“You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.” Bob Dylan

“You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.” Bob Dylan

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“You are the music while the music lasts.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?” Thomas Stearns Eliot

“A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.” Thomas Stearns Eliot