American Masters

Billy Wilder:
I'm no pushover. I laugh at Hamlet.

Fortunato:
For the love of God, Montresor!

Montresor:
Yes - for the love of God.

Reporter:
How many people who major in the same musical vineyard in which you toil, how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the uh, social state in which we live today, the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.

Bob Dylan:
Um... how many?

Reporter:
Yes. How many?

Bob Dylan:
Uh, I think there's about uh, 136. [People around him giggle. The reporter doesn't laugh]

Reporter:
You say ABOUT 136, or you mean exactly 136?

Bob Dylan:
Uh, it's either 136 or 142.

Bob Dylan:
We all like motorcycles to some degree.

Bob Dylan:
[after just being told there was a man outside of the building declaring he was going to shoot him] Hey man... I don't mind being shot, I just don't dig being told about it.

Bob Dylan:
[to his band] Play it f***in' loud.

Bob Johnston:
I believe in giving credit where credit's due. I don't think Dylan had a lot to do with it. I think God instead of touching him on the shoulder he kicked him in the ass. Really. And that's where all that came from. He can't help what he's doing. I mean he's got the Holy Spirit about him. You can look at him and tell that.

Mickey Jones:
People have said to me the word that, uh, he was a traitor to folk music, the *pure* music.

Bob Dylan:
I'd just about had it, though, I'd had it with the whole scene. And, uh, whether I knew it or didn't know it, I was, uh, lookin' to quit for a while.

unknown:
Well, what about the scene? What had you "had it with"? What about the scene were you sick of?

Bob Dylan:
Uh, well, ya know, people like *you*, people like, uh, ya know, just, ya know, like bein' pressed and hammered and, uh, bein' expected to answer questions. It's enough to make anybody sick, really.

Bob Dylan:
[while reading a store sign] I'm looking for a place that will collect, clip, bath and return my dog. Kn1 7727, cigarettes and tobacco. Animals and birds bought or sold on commission. animals and birds bought or sold on commission. I want a dog that's gonna collect and clean my bath, return my cigarette, and, and give tobacco to my animals, and give my birds a commission. I want- I'm looking for somebody to sell my dog, collect my clip, buy my animal and straighten out my bird. I'm looking for a place to bathe my bird, buy my dog, collect my clip, sell me cigarrets and comission my bath. I'm looking for a place that's gonna collect my commission, sell my dog, burn my bird, and sell me to the cigarette. Going to bird my buy, collect my will, and bathe my comission. I'm looking for a place that's going to animal my soul, knit my return, bathe my foot and collect my dog. Comission me to sell my animals to the bird to clip and buy my bath and return me back to the cigarettes.

Bob Dylan:
You can't be wise and in love at the same time.

Allen Ginsberg:
There is a very famous saying among Tibetan Buddhists: "If the student is not better than the teacher, then the teacher is a failure."

Allen Ginsberg:
It's sort of a biblical prophecy.

Allen Ginsberg:
Poetry is words that are empowered to make your hair stand on end, that you realize instantly as being some form of subjective truth that has an objective reality to it, because somebody has realized it. Then you call it poetry later.

Bob Dylan:
I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be, and so I'm on my way home.