Having hits buries a singer in the past. A lot of singers hide in the past because it's safer back there. If you've ever heard today's country music, you'll know what I'm talking about.

A lot of people don't have much food on their table. But they got a lot of forks 'n knives. And they got to cut somethin'.

Abe said, where do you want this killing done? God said, out on highway 61.

Once I went into songwriting, I figured I had to - I couldn't be a hellfire rock 'n' roller. But I could write hellfire lyrics.

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.

In 1975,Bob Dylan was almost 10 years past his prime - and then he released the best album of his career, Blood on the Tracks. Written and recorded amid a painful divorce, Blood on the Tracks is proof that heartbreak makes great art - just as many of the albums that followed were the opposite.

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.