Bob Dylan

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

I’ve been up the mountain and I had a choice. Should I come down? So I came down. God said, Okay, you’ve been up on the mountain, now you go down. You’re on your own, free. Check in later, but now you’re on your own.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past — whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.

Sometimes it’s not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean.

When onstage, I always try to take my audience through as many emotions as I possibly can. I want them to go from laughter to tears, be shocked and surprised and walk out the door with a renewed sense of themselves – and maybe a smile.

To me YES, AND means don’t be afraid to contribute. Always make sure you’re adding something to the discussion. Your initiations are worthwhile.

Finding a good bus driver can be as important as finding a good musician.

The things that people do come so easy to me. I could do it in my sleep. But I’m such a perfectionist that when something is too easy to me, I actually feel guilty.

Everybody I know in England was raised on Mose Allison.

Boys love being bossed around by me tho…

To say I’m an overrated troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair.

We’re still trying to break records on the twentieth anniversary of Live Aid. I’ve just heard Bob Geldof has put Phil Collins on a jet to Philadelphia. There’s nothing going on there, we just don’t want him around this year. No I’m joking, of course we didn’t put him on a jet. We stuck him in a catapult. To be fair, he didn’t get very far. Although it worked in rehearsals when we used it on Chris De Burgh. I could do a whole routine about injuring Phil f**king Collins.

What’s that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I’m able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I’m older. Thank God for growing up.

I feel like there’s a race being run in Los Angeles for some unattainable goal – to be the best, the skinniest, the most beautiful. I just admit that that’s what I’ll never be.

The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.

(While accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting) Most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, ‘Wonderful. Just have a back-up profession like welding.’

[about the showbiz lifestyle] It’s all too much trouble for me. It’s probably because I’m fat and lazy and old.

I can’t believe you recently had a baby. How do you do it? [pause] The baby starts to come down…and once that happens you can’t-it comes out. Whether you let it or not, the baby comes out. So that’s how I did it.

Any single part of Brexit is a mountainous task and that is before you get to the tiny little bits that you understand that we haven’t even thought might be a problem. John Oliver