I thought that coming out was going to be the end of my religious life but actually it was the beginning. Because it only afterwards that I could be honest about who I was, what I wanted, how I understood spirituality.

People should support equality because of their religion not despite it. These are the values that openness, inclusion, diversity promote. And they're directly opposed to the kind of enforced closet of certain interpretations of religion.

The best songs of this [modern] period - the apocalyptic "High Water," for example - return [Bob] Dylan to where he was in his first phase, updating and transforming American traditional music.

There has been a ton of excellent music in this period (along with a few misses), evoking scenes like a bar-room brawl at a border-town dive, a washed-up singer in a smoky lounge, and the scenes of violence in Bob Dylan latter-day music videos.I think the ethos of this period is best summed up in the 2001 song "Summer Days".

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

"Masters of War" [of Bob Dylan] wasn't peacenik, anti-war stuff. With its minor key and uncompromising final lines ("And I hope that you die/And your death'll come soon/ I will follow your casket/ In the pale afternoon...") this was a previously unknown hybrid of caustic political commentary and punk rock, which itself wouldn't be invented for another decade or so.

In honor of his new Nobel, this hard-core Dylanophile wants to share with you a song or two from each of his many incarnations. Because you deserve to know.