"I didn't want to repeat the same notes in the second verse that I used in the first, so I wrote out all the notes of the song and all the notes that were missing in the scale, given that there are twelve notes from octave to octave. All those notes that weren't in the scale were the ones I wanted in for the next verse. The listener isn't aware that they are new notes, but the sound is pleasing to the ear. I change the key, and somehow it's fresh because you haven't heard those notes before."

"Cecilia, you're breaking my heart You're shaking my confidence daily Oh, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees I'm begging you please to come home."

"I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail Yes I would, if I could, I surely would I'd rather be a hammer than a nail Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would"

"Sail on Silver Girl, Sail on by Your time has come to shine All your dreams are on their way See how they shine If you need a friend I'm sailing right behind..."

"I'll take your part When darkness comes And pain is all around."

"Zebras are reactionaries, Antelopes are missionaries, Pigeons plot in secrecy, And hamsters turn on frequently."

"Dylan is free now to work on his own terms. It would be foolish to predict what he will do next. But hopefully he will remain a mediator, using the language of pop to transcend it. If the gap between past and present continues to widen, such mediation may be crucial. In a communications crisis, the true prophets are the translators."

"I'll never be Bob Dylan. He's the master. If I'd like to be anyone, it's him. And he's a great writer, true to his music and done what he feels is the right thing to do for years and years and years. He's great. He's the one I look to. I'm always interested in what he's doing now, or did last, or did a long time ago that I didn't find out about. The guy has written some of the greatest poetry and put it to music in a way that it touched me, and other people have done that, but not so consistently or as intensely. Like me, he waits around and keeps going, and he knows that he doesn't have the muse all the time, but he knows that it'll come back and it'll visit him and he'll have his moment."

"There was a new popular music of protest. Pete Seeger had been singing protest songs since the forties, but now he came into his own, his audiences much larger. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, singing not only protest songs, but songs reflecting the new abandon, the new culture, became popular idols. A middle-aged woman on the West Coast, Malvina Reynolds, wrote and sang songs that fit her socialist thinking and her libertarian spirit, as well as her critique of the modern commercial culture."

"You don't know someone's changing the world until the world's been changed."

"Dylan creates a mythic atmosphere out of the land around us. The land we walk on every day and never see until someone shows it to us."

"Dylan has invented himself. He's made himself up from scratch. That is, from the things he had around him and inside him. Dylan is an invention of his own mind. The point isn't to figure him out but to take him in. He gets into you anyway, so why not just take him in? He's not the first one to have invented himself, but he's the first one to have invented Dylan..."

"Dylan was a revolutionary. Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. ... To this day, wherever great rock music is being made, there is the shadow of Bob Dylan."

"since I've been working in the theatre and listening over to some of his music and to his lyrics, I am getting quite a respect for him as a poet. I'm not happy about a lot of diffused, little cheating lines, second rate realism, that he sometimes offered. But in the same context, where the music is in a thriving rock culture, he's in that soft rock or whatever culture. Then he is a poet working within the same conditions that a Third World poet is working in because he is close to music and he's closer to the beat of the thing."

"Dylan's heart rests in his vocation. He is a white bluesman par excellence. His voice is born out of that vocation, informed by a vision rooted in reaching and teaching as many people as possible."

"Come Congressmen, Senators, please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled There’s a battle outside and it's ragin’."

"Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don't criticize What you can't understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly agin'."

"Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who that it's naming.’ For the loser now will be later to win"

"Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown. And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin'."

"Half of the people can be part right all of the time, Some of the people can be all right part of the time, But all the people can't be all right all the time. I think Abraham Lincoln said that. I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours. I said that."

"I got into the driver's seat and drove down 42nd Street in my Cadillac. Good car to drive after a war."

"I ain't saying you treated me unkind You could have done better but I don't mind You just kinda wasted my precious time But don't think twice, it's all right."

"I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe Where I'm bound, I can't tell But goodbye's too good a word, babe So I'll just say fare thee well"

"I once loved a woman, a child I am told I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul."

"It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe If you don't know by now"

"It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall."

"But I'll know my song well before I start singin'."

"And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it."

"I met a white man who walked a black dog."

"I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'."

"I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world."

"I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken."

"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it."

"Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one?"

"And I hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand o'er your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead"

"There is one thing I know though I'm younger than you Even Jesus would not forgive what you do"

"You ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins."

"All the money you made will never buy back your soul."

"But I see through your eyes"

"So if you're travelin' in the north country fair, Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, Remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine."

"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind."

"Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?"

"How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?"

"How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see?"

"Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?"

"How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?"

"Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Lead Belly too An' to all the good people that traveled with you Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men That come with the dust and are gone with the wind"

"Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song, 'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born"

"I'm out here a thousand miles from my home Walkin' a road other men have gone down I'm seein' your world of people and things Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings"

"A lot of people don't have much food on their table But they got a lot of forks and knives And they gotta cut something"