It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits

Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice

We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

Every youth movement presents itself as a loan to the future, and tries to call in its lien in advance, but when there is no future all loans are canceled.

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him.

I never find myself even catching lyrics until something in the sound has taken me captive. Thinking about anything else is just the pleasurable byproduct of wow.

Forgiveness: It’s not because they deserve it

The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect.

Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine time patience

For if you look closelyAt the so called idols of the worldThey have something in common.They were ignorantThey ignored the noiseThey created their own path.

What is blackness? Is it the way you talk? Do you got to say, 'Dey this, dey dat.' Or the way you dress? Or is it the forgiving of certain things? What is black enough?

What shall he fear that does not fear death.

The novel [The Kite Runner] came about as an expansion of that original, unpublished short story.

The actual making of the records obviously have everything to do with each other, because I made them one day after the other, alternating doing it.

Our own life has to be our message.

The breath that sharpens life is life itself.