Dylan

Quotes excerpted from Mikal Gilmore's interview with Bob Dylan in the September 27 issue of Rolling Stone. I was writing these down in my book on a flight to New York City while listening to Dylan's new album on repeat my headphones. Rare to get the chance to be so immersed in anything...

"The old is still happening while the new enters the scene, sometimes unnoticed. The new is overlapping at the same time the old is weakening its hold. It goes on and on like that. Forever through the centuries. Sooner or later, before you know it, everything is new and what happened to the old? It's like a magician trick, but you have to keep connecting with it."

"Transfiguration is what allows you to crawl out from under the chaos and fly above it."

[On growing up in a small town] "You had the whole town to roam around in, though, and there didn't seem to be any sadness or fear or insecurity. It was just woods and sky and rivers and streams, winter and summer, spring, autumn."

"My songs are personal music; they're not communal. I wouldn't want people singing along with me. It would sound funny. I'm not playing campfire meetings...The thing you have to do is make people feel their own emotions." 

"You have to constantly reshape things because everything keeps expanding on you. Life has a way of spreading out."

"Is performing a fulfilling way of life? Well, what kind of way of life is fulfilling? No kind of life is fulfilling if your soul hasn't been redeemed."

"Inspiration can hit you anywhere. It's magical. It's really beyond me."

"Everybody is called but few are chosen. There's a lot of distraction for people, so you might not never find the real you. A lot of people don't."