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" Songs seem to take me a long time. I don't know why; they're not especially excellent for taking so long. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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" Success is survival. "

" I've never sold widely enough to be able to relax about money. I had two kids and their mother to support and my own life. So there was never an option of cutting out. "

" 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. "

" I never had the sense that there was an end: that there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot. "

" I was born in a suit. "

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

" When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you. "

" Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered. "

" I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog. "

" When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love. "

" I had girlfriends who really irritated me by their devotion to the Beatles. I didn't begrudge them their interest, and there were songs like 'Hey Jude' that I could appreciate. But they didn't seem to be essential to the kind of nourishment that I craved. "

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

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