Quotes from Jakob Dylan

There's only so many things to sing about, so what's going to make a song appeal to you more than someone else's is just a unique way of saying the same thing.

I got to watch my heroes meet him and saw how they reacted, whether it was Joe Strummer or Tom Waits. It was peculiar. I'm so stoked to meet Tom Waits, and he's so nervous to meet my dad. It's a head spin.

If people want to talk about Bob Dylan, I can talk about that. But my dad belongs to me and four other people exclusively. I'm very protective of that. And telling people whether he was affectionate is telling people a lot. It has so little to do with me. I come up against a wall.

I don't feel like I chose to do music as much as I made a decision to not stop doing music.

Tolerance can lead to learning something.

Music is something I really have a need to do - I don't seem to be able to stop

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

My songs have always had hope and perseverance in them - I never write songs that have no escape hatch, no positivity.

You couldn't really like a bad guitar in 1960 'cause everybody was pretty good.

If all you were left believing was what you were seeing, it'd be nothing but desperate. To have hope, you're going to have to imagine that there's something behind the curtain.

You might have a favorite band and really dislike one of the records. That's fine.

We've all had that experience where we hear a song that we've liked for many years, and we finally hear what the writer tells us what it's about, and you're often disappointed.

Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.

I've got a life that really matters to me, and that's because of the way I was raised. My ethics are high because my parents did a great job.

Songs are not better just because they're emotionally honest. To write a song well, you have to put some work into it and grind it out.

It's a little gross to put yourself in every song. I mean, how interesting do people really think you are?

You have to have a work ethic, and you have to be educated in what you're doing. You have to take it seriously. It doesn't mean that everything you do has to be serious. But you've got to have the tools.

I'm in an area where I want to make music that I'm thrilled with, but, you know, I do have to worry about putting food on the table. I'm in that position where I cannot always be gauging what things might become. I have to look ahead, because I'm cautious.

If I'm judged against my peers, rather than anyone else we could both think of, then I reckon I deserve to make records.

To us, there was Bob Dylan, and there was dad. As for what he meant to other people, that was never glorified in our house. There were no accolades there, no gold records.

It's been said that I formed The Wallflowers to hide my name but, really, I've always wanted to be in a band - right from the day my friends and I soundproofed a garage with bed-covers for our first rehearsal.

I'm not somebody who carries around a notepad and writes songs all day long. I don't imagine everything I think of is worth being in a song. So I tend to collect notes, and I set time aside to go to work and write songs.

Writing songs is a trade like anything else.

I think there's always been hope in my songs, no matter how they've first appeared. I think there's always been a shred of hope in everything I've written 'cause I like that balance.