I'm Not There quotes

View Quote I don't need to look to someone else to tell me I'm good. Slaughter me for all I care; I refuse to be hurt.

View Quote I know I have a sickness festering somewhere. I don't mean like Woody Guthrie, wasting away in some hospital. I couldn't do that, decay like that. That's nature's will, and I'm against nature. I don't dig nature at all. The only truly natural things are dreams, which nature cannot touch with decay.

View Quote It's a fierce sort of feeling, thinking something is expected of you but you don't know exactly what it is. Brings forth a weird kind of guilt.

View Quote It's like you got yesterday, today and tomorrow, all in the same room. There's no telling what can happen.

View Quote New York, August 7 of 1964. Congress grants President Johnson complete authority over the war while she studies painting at Cooper Union and he completes dubbing on his first major film. She tells him she's sure it will be a hit. And the cats across the roof, mad in love, scream into drainpipes. And it's I who am ready, ready to listen. Never tired, never sad, never guilty.

View Quote People are always talking about freedom. Freedom to live a certain way, without being kicked around. 'Course, the more you live a certain way, the less it feel like freedom. Me, I can change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time.

View Quote See, you just want me to say what you want me to say.

View Quote Seven simple rules for life in hiding: 1. Never trust a cop in a raincoat. 2. Beware of enthusiasm and of love, each is temporary and quick to sway. 3. If asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks; he will not ask you again. 4. and 5. Never give your real name and if ever told to look at yourself, never look. 6. Never say or do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand, and 7. Never create anything. It will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life and it will never change.

View Quote Woody Guthrie was dead, Little Richard was becoming a preacher, so whether you're a folksinger or a Christian, rock 'n' roll was the devil. Me? I was in a ditch, up a cliff, out of step, ready to quit. I wrote the kind of stuff you write when you have no place to live and you're wrapped up in the fire pump. I nearly killed myself with pity and despair. And then I wrote it. It was like swimming in lava. Skipping, kicking, catching a nail with your foot. Seeing your victim hanging from a tree.

View Quote Yeah, I have none of those feelings.

View Quote Yeah, it's chaos, it's clocks, it's watermelons, it's everything.

View Quote You don't have to write anything down to be a poet. Some work in gas stations. Some shine shoes. I don't really call myself one because I don't like the word. Me? I'm a trapeze artist. Sighting it and hearing it and breathing it in; rubbing it all in the pores of my skin. And the wind between my eyes, milk and honey in my comb.

View Quote You know, it's nature's will. And I'm against nature. I don't dig nature at all.