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" I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin. "

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" I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use. "

" I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly. "

" Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process. "

" We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it. "

" All of my writing has guitars behind it, even the novels. "

" I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it. "

" We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. And there are times in one's life when one has to close down just to regroup. "

" Some people care about their work lasting forever - I have little interest in it. "

" The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show. "

" My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca. "

" I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together. "

" Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. "

" We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what? "

" My mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my environment were half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn't be able to make it from room to room. "

" Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity. "

" There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion. "

" I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability. "

" I've always been into self-dramatization. I intend to live forever. "

" Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five! "

" I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse. "

" I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face. "

" As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line. "

" I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune. "

" As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one's life or one's work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now. "

" One of the reasons I'm on tour is to meet people. I consider it a reconnaissance. You know, I consider myself like in a military operation. I don't feel like a citizen. "

" I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet. "

" There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. "

" There are some people who come to me for some illumination on their problems. I guess they feel I'm writing about some of the things they themselves are going through. But I don't usually have much help to give - there isn't much you can say to someone in the midst of their own crises. "

" I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us: you don't write the songs anyhow. So if you're lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you're lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this. "

" I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words. "