[Bob] Dylan is a contemporary Don Quixote, at once besotted by the promise of America and yet also undermining it.

Except in these latter-day songs, [Bob] Dylan is a grizzled old prophet who's already been to hell and back.

I suspect many readers might associate [Bob Dylan] with one of the shortest phases of his career, the time from 1963 to '65 when he wrote his most famous "protest songs," like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin.'"

I was raised a nice Jewish boy in a Conservative household. Went to Camp Ramah. It's funny actually. I think I enacted my queerness there unconsciously. I was kind of one of the weirdos. I was on staff and definitely interested in alternatives to what that social structure was supposed to be.

The Buddha’s dharma didn’t teach peace and relaxation; it taught awakening—often rude awakening.

Folk music had long been political but [Bob] Dylan's poetry took it to a new level.

Funny thing about Bob Dylan, the newest Nobel laureate in literature: He's been a master of self-invention for more than 50 years, creating personae, wearing them like masks, and then discarding them as soon as they grew too familiar.