I'm Not There

"[To a crucifix] How does it feel?"

"[Looking up at a giant Jesus on the cross] Do your early stuff!"

"How can I answer that if you got the nerve to ask me?"

"See, you just want me to say what you want me to say."

"Yeah, I have none of those feelings."

"God, I'm glad I'm not me."

"Yeah, it's chaos, it's clocks, it's watermelons, it's everything."

"Everybody knows I'm not a folk singer."

"I don't need to look to someone else to tell me I'm good. Slaughter me for all I care; I refuse to be hurt."

"Good and evil were invented by people trapped in scenes!"

"I accept chaos. I don't know whether it accepts me."

"You know, it's nature's will. And I'm against nature. I don't dig nature at all."

"Seven simple rules for life in hiding:"

"Woody Guthrie was dead, Little Richard was becoming a preacher, so whether you're a folksinger or a Christian, rock 'n' roll was the devil. Me? I was in a ditch, up a cliff, out of step, ready to quit. I wrote the kind of stuff you write when you have no place to live and you're wrapped up in the fire pump. I nearly killed myself with pity and despair. And then I wrote it. It was like swimming in lava. Skipping, kicking, catching a nail with your foot. Seeing your victim hanging from a tree."

"You don't have to write anything down to be a poet. Some work in gas stations. Some shine shoes. I don't really call myself one because I don't like the word. Me? I'm a trapeze artist. Sighting it and hearing it and breathing it in; rubbing it all in the pores of my skin. And the wind between my eyes, milk and honey in my comb."

"I know I have a sickness festering somewhere. I don't mean like Woody Guthrie, wasting away in some hospital. I couldn't do that, decay like that. That's nature's will, and I'm against nature. I don't dig nature at all. The only truly natural things are dreams, which nature cannot touch with decay."

"All they want from me is finger-pointin' songs. I only got ten fingers."

"It's a fierce sort of feeling, thinking something is expected of you but you don't know exactly what it is. Brings forth a weird kind of guilt."

"New York, August 7 of 1964. Congress grants President Johnson complete authority over the war while she studies painting at Cooper Union and he completes dubbing on his first major film. She tells him she's sure it will be a hit. And the cats across the roof, mad in love, scream into drainpipes. And it's I who am ready, ready to listen. Never tired, never sad, never guilty."

"Grain of Sand would become the underground hit of 1965 and Robbie Clark the new James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Jack Kerouac all rolled into one. But the movie disappointed her. The more they tried to make it youthful, the more the energies on screen seemed out of date. It wasn't the film they had dreamed, the film they had imagined and discussed. The film they each wanted to live."

"People are always talking about freedom. Freedom to live a certain way, without being kicked around. 'Course, the more you live a certain way, the less it feel like freedom. Me, I can change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time."

"It's like you got yesterday, today and tomorrow, all in the same room. There's no telling what can happen."

"Cate Blanchett – Jude Quinn"

"Ben Whishaw – Arthur Rimbaud"

"Christian Bale – Jack Rollins/Pastor Jack"

"Richard Gere – Billy the Kid"

"Marcus Carl Franklin – Woody Guthrie"

"Heath Ledger – Robbie Clark"