I don't have the kinds of relationships that are built on any kind of false pretense, not to say that I haven't. I've had just as many as anybody else, but I haven't had them in a long time.

I play these [folk acoustic] concerts and I ask myself, 'Would you come see me tonight?' - and I'd have to answer truthfully, 'No, I wouldn't come. I'd rather be doin' something else, really I would. That something else is rock... The words are pictures, and the rock's gonna help me flesh out the colors of the pictures. (1965)

Along with some of the worst music of Bob Dylan's career ("Self-Portrait," 1970), this period produced some gems - including many songs recorded with The Band in '67 but not released until years later.

And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.

People don't live or die, people just float.

Being singer is different than being an actor, where you call up sources from your own experience that you can apply to whatever Shakespeare drama you're in. But an actor is pretending to be somebody, a singer isn't. And that's the difference. Singers today have to sing songs where there's very little emotion involved. That and the fact that they have to sing hit records from years gone by doesn't leave a lot of room for any kind of intelligent creativity.

If you wanted to, it would be easy to find some crappy lyrics [of Bob Dylan] from the Eighties to undermine the Nobel Prize.