The most recent incarnation of [Bob] Dylan has been the traveling journeyman/ charlatan who sings roots music, snarls dark lyrics that make "All Along the Watchtower" sound like a Disney tune, hosts an old-school radio show, and turns up in some unusual places, like ads for Chrysler and Victoria's Secret.

[Bob] Dylan, like Johnny Cash and only a handful of others, simultaneously embodies the American dream and the harsh wake-up call that comes after it.

[Bob] Dylan thus deserves the Nobel Prize, not just for "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," as the Nobel committee aptly described his work, but also for embodying the contradictions within 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.

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

Religion is commodified; the educational system is a sham; and yet,[Bob] Dylan wonders, everyone has to stand naked sometime.

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.