Bob Quotes - Page 3

• "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.

  Jay Michaelson

  War, Keys, Rocks

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• In the meantime [1963-65], [Bob] Dylan was writing some of the best love songs in the genre, like "Girl From the North Country," "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," and "It Ain't Me, Babe."

  Jay Michaelson

  Girl, Country, Song

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Probably the high-watermark of [Bob] Dylan's career came after he plugged in his guitar ("Judas!" one fan shouted during a concert) and exploded American poetry, combining Beat aesthetics, psychedelic imagery, collage techniques.

  Jay Michaelson

  Guitar, Careers, Technique

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• [Bob] Dylan would cut out phrases from magazines and then paste them together.

  Jay Michaelson

  Cutting, Together, Phrases

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• While [Bob] Dylan's folk fans thought he was selling out [in 1965-67], actually Dylan was lodging a stronger, deeper critique of American hypocrisy.

  Jay Michaelson

  Hypocrisy, Stronger, Fans

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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

  Jay Michaelson

  Educational, Naked, Wonder

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• As in 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'?" The skull howled with laughter. "You just got your ass handed to you by a nursery tale?""I wouldn't say they handed me my ass," I said.Bob was nearly strangling on his laughter, and given that he had no lungs it seemed gratuitous somehow. "That's because you can't see yourself," he choked out. "Your nose is all swollen up and you've got two black eyes. You look like a raccoon. Holding a dislocated ass.

  Jim Butcher

  Laughter, Eye, Two

  Jim Butcher (2009). “Small Favor: A Novel of the Dresden Files”, p.31, Penguin

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• [Bob] Dylan may, for whatever reasons of his own, do nothing of the sort with the Nobel committee. Up there on Parnassus, that is his unquestionable prerogative. But here on my anthill, it's mine to say: oh, do piss off, you ineffable snobs.

  David Bennun

  May, Reason, Nobel

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The same is true of ranking him thus against any work of literature. [Bob Dylan] has been made, through no fault of his own, the object of odious tokenism.

  David Bennun

  Literature, Tokenism, Faults

  Source: thequietus.com

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• There's no reason - not yet, anyway - to believe [Bob] Dylan himself endorses such an attitude; or that he would think of himself as a more profound and worthy recipient than, for instance, any of the brilliant Motown or girl-group lyricists who are more likely to be awarded a Nobel prize for chemistry than for literature. Whether there is more truth and humanity in his best lyrics than in Abba's, or less, is unquantifiable, and it would be meretricious to attempt such a calculation in contesting an argument he has been dragged into.

  David Bennun

  Girl, Attitude, Believe

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I don't see you making a movie about Bob Arum.

  Don King

  Boxing

  "Don King: Only in America". TV Movie, www.imdb.com. 1997.

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• Some performers are brilliant comedians, some are genius musicians, and some just make you happy to be alive. THE BOBS are all of that - and then some.

  Paul Provenza

  Comedian, Genius, Alive

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• And you don't want to just totally mess up the rhythm when you're playing with Bob Dylan.

  Jenna Elfman

  Want, Dylan, Rhythm

  Interview with Lila Holland, www.tv.com. June 14, 2006.

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• I've been a fan of Kenny Bob's for almost 20 years, and he's always made me laugh, and laugh hard! He is just, flat-out, a great entertainer!

  Bob Goen

  Years, Laughing, Fans

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• Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate. A new fact so shocking that even the year's most notable deaths have not outdone it for the volume (in both senses) of instant reaction; so divisive, it makes Brexit, the Labour leadership and the US Presidential election seem lesser ruptures.

  David Bennun

  Years, Presidential, Rupture

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The Yeas are relatively uniform. They view [Bob] Dylan as one of the greatest artists of his or any era, who deserves to be taken as seriously as any litterateur. Where they vary is in some cases not even accepting the distinction: Dylan in their eyes is a literary titan, and the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature is simply official affirmation of what they already knew.

  David Bennun

  Taken, Eye, Artist

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The general sentiment among the Yeas is, no accolade is too high for their man; and the Nobel being, literally, the gold standard among prizes, it is surely his [Bob Dylan] due.

  David Bennun

  Men, Gold, Nobel

  Source: thequietus.com

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• First of all, there are those who simply don't care for [Bob] Dylan, or at least, don't think he's that great. Some of the former sound very much as if they are afflicted with the kind of contrarianism inevitably bred by cultural orthodoxy - Dylan is overwhelmingly rated a giant and a marvel, the acclamation of whom they feel to be de rigueur; and rather than judge for themselves, they embrace the opposite view.

  David Bennun

  Thinking, Views, Opposites

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Plenty more of the Nays sound perfectly sincere, though. They may genuinely dislike [Bob] Dylan; they may even enjoy or admire him, but just don't think he's all that. Fair enough. The reaction of such folk seems to be chiefly amazement tinged with befuddlement: they've given him what? You're kidding me.

  David Bennun

  Thinking, Sound, May

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The [Nobel] prize is for literature.[Bob] Dylan is a songwriter. Here is where the argument starts to get interesting, because here is where it is no longer a question of either cultural orthodoxy or personal taste.

  David Bennun

  Interesting, Literature, Taste

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I have seen quite a few folk whom I know to be both fair minded and, as it happens,[Bob] Dylan fans, take up cudgels for this position. To them, it's not necessarily that Dylan doesn't merit the highest honour. It's that he doesn't merit this specific highest honour [Nobel prize], in the way a champion pole vaulter shouldn't be given a medal for the long jump. It is in this group that the Wahey!s are mainly to be found, firing off jests, or mock solemnly reciting Dylan's sillier lyrics as if these are entirely representative of his oeuvre.

  David Bennun

  Long, Champion, Fans

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The question now becomes about defining your terms. What is literature? Unless we allow it to encompass the oral tradition from which it grew, which means taking it back to Homer and beyond, it demands the written word - poetry and prose. [Bob] Dylan is no slouch at the written word, both in its own right, and transcribed from his lyrics, which have often been acclaimed as poetry and may well stand up as such. But that is not his métier.

  David Bennun

  Mean, Oral Tradition, Literature

  Source: thequietus.com

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• On another front of the category-error argument are the insufferable fogeys who think the [Nobel] award is an outrage upon literature itself. That the problem is not simply a mistake may have been made about definitions, but that awful vulgarians are encroaching upon their sacred places. [Bob] Dylan, to them, is the harbinger of the low-culture mob; the latest in an unending number of final straws, or the thin end of a wedge that never seems to get thicker.

  David Bennun

  Mistake, Thinking, Numbers

  Source: thequietus.com

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• [I have] my own view about [Bob] Dylan's Nobel prize. Which is, I'm firmly in the Nay camp. I do think the award is a category error, but that's not why. Not in itself. What bothers me is the perceived status of the categories. If pop lyricists were routinely considered for the prize as are authors and poets, I'd still think it mistaken, but I wouldn't much care. But I am quite certain that Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, for example, both at the very least Dylan's equals as writers, have never been in the running and never will be.

  David Bennun

  Running, Thinking, Views

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The [Nobel] award [of Bob Dylan] is no affront to literature; it is an insult to pop music. It is a condescending ruffle of pop's hair while handing it a lollipop. An act of beaming condescension whose transparent message is: "This one guy, and just this one guy, he's so good, he transcends his trivial idiom and elevates himself into our significant one."

  David Bennun

  Awards, Hair, Guy

  Source: thequietus.com

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