- Bob Dylan: I don't think they want to hear what I want to play.
- Johnny Cash: Who's they?
- Bob Dylan: You know, the people who decide what folk music is or isn't.
- Johnny Cash: Fuck them, I wanna hear you. Go track some mud on somebody's carpet. Make some noise, B.D.
- Bob Dylan: [In Sylvie/Suze's apartment after he'd been punched] Everyone asks where these songs come from, Sylvie. But then you watch their faces, and they're not asking where the songs come from. They're asking why the songs didn't come to them.
- Sylvie Russo: [in her final scene saying goodbye to Bob through the fence at the ferry terminal] It was fun to be on the carnival train with you, Bobby, but I think I gotta step off. I feel like one of those plates, you know, that the French guy spins on those sticks on the Sullivan show.
- Bob Dylan: Oh, I like that guy.
- Sylvie Russo: I'm sure it's fun to *be* the guy, Bob. But I was a plate.
- Bob Dylan: Excuse me, Mr. Guthrie.
- Pete Seeger: Only the government calls him that.
- Bob Dylan: I'm not the government.
- Bob Dylan: [in elevator after leaving fancy Harold Leventhal party] Two hundred people in that room and each one wants me to be somebody else. They should just fuck off and let me be.
- Bobby Neuwirth: Be what?
- Bob Dylan: Excuse me?
- Bobby Neuwirth: They should fuck off and let you be what?
- Bob Dylan: I don't know. Whatever it is they don't want me to be.
- Bobby Neuwirth: Y'know, I'm not a horse, so... I don't like carrying other people's weight.
- Bob Dylan: Yeah, well, I got a hundred pounds on me that don't show on the scale.
- Bobby Neuwirth: How do you sing then?
- Bob Dylan: I put myself in another place. But I'm a stranger there.
- Joan Baez: [in the Village apartment their first morning after] Who taught you to play?
- Bob Dylan: I taught myself, really. Picked up a few licks at the carnival.
- Joan Baez: [in disbelief] At the carnival?
- Bob Dylan: Oh yeah, there was singing cowboys that come through teach me all sorts of funny chords. They'd pass through doin' shows in Kansas or Dakotas. These chords I learned from a cowboy named Wigglefoot.
- Joan Baez: You were in a carnival?
- [pause]
- Joan Baez: You are so completely full of shit.
- Albert Grossman: How fast can we get him out of here.
- Bobby Neuwirth: Like he was never here.
- Albert Grossman: [after short pause.] . Not that fast.
- Sylvie Russo: [in coffeeshop after seeing 'Now, Voyager' movie] What do you want to be?
- Bob Dylan: A musician. Who eats.
- Sylvie Russo: Well, I like your songs.
- Bob Dylan: My record comes out in a couple weeks.
- Sylvie Russo: Some of the songs you played today on your record?
- Bob Dylan: It's mostly covers. It's traditional stuff. Y'know, folk songs are supposed to stand the test of time, like Shakespeare or something. They say no one wants to hear what a kid wrote last month.
- Sylvie Russo: Who's 'they'?
- Bob Dylan: The record company. Manager.
- Sylvie Russo: I'm sorry, but, Where Have All The Flowers Gone? is not Shakespeare.
- [reaches in purse to pay coffeeshop bill]
- Sylvie Russo: There was a time when the old songs were new, right? Someone at some point had to give the songs a chance.
- [they get up and begin to leave the restaurant]
- Sylvie Russo: I mean, there's a civil war going on down south. The biggest military buildup in history. Nuclear bombs hanging over us. It's not all about the Dust Bowl and Johnny Appleseed anymore.
- Bob Dylan: [in voiceover reading the letter he's writing to Johnny Cash on an airplane] Dear Johnny, Thanks for that letter. I am now famous -- famous by the rules of public famiosity. It snuck up on me and pulverized me. To quote Mr. Freud, I get quite paranoid.
- Johnny Cash: [in voiceover reading the letter he's writing to Dylan on an airplane. According to director James Mangold they had access via the archives to the actual letters Johnny wrote Bob] Bob -- Got your letter. Tonight I sit in the wake of one more hard rain. I was in New York last week. Saw a bunch of folk singers that couldn't hold a chigger on your ass. Well, I'll see you in Newport come spring. Until then, track mud on somebody's carpet.
- Dave Van Ronk: -
- [at Sylvie/Suze's apartment party, talking to Bob & other guest]
- Dave Van Ronk: "You can call it country or blues or rock'n'roll - we all keep rewriting the same song."
- Alan Lomax: [confronts Bob at motel about playing acoustic versus electric music] It was the Newport Folk Festival then, Bob, and it still is the Newport *Folk* Festival! Not the teen dream, Brill Building, Top Forty British Invasion Festival -- a *Folk* festival. Do you even remember folk music, Bob?
- Bob Dylan: [walking away] No, what's that? Maybe you could sing me something.
- Alan Lomax: [Angrily introducing Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival] You wanted him, you can have him: Bob Dylan!
- Pete Seeger: More and more people have been showing up, and they're bringing their teaspoons. Teaspoons for justice, and teaspoons for peace, and teaspoons for love, and that's what we do. And, gosh, you showed up, Bobby, and damn it, if you didn't bring a shovel.
- Pete Seeger: [as the janitor who berated Woody and Bob for smoking and playing music leaves.] Well, I guess every deck come with two jokers, don't it?
- Tom Wilson: [while recording Bob performing "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] Who, who wrote this?
- Albert Grossman: He did.
- Bob Dylan: [after Woody Guthrie hands him a card that reads 'I ain't dead yet'.] That's for damn sure.
- Bob Dylan: [Lifts back Albert Grossman's suit jacket to reveal a gun as they enter Columbia Records] Are you packing heat, Albert?
- Albert Grossman: Get out of here!
- Bob Dylan: Is that a snub nose?
- Bob Dylan: [after singing "Masters of War" at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.] Troubling times, go find someone to love.
- Joan Baez: [Backstage at a gig as Grossman tries to sell her on moving from her label to Columbia] Albert.
- Albert Grossman: Um hmm.
- Joan Baez: Please leave.
- Bob Dylan: [Leaving the motel, heading to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.] Three songs, get out, 'thank you' and good night.
- Bob Dylan: [Bob on phone with manager Albert Grossman demanding the right musicians to record Highway 61] Not Mike Bloom*feld*, Albert, Mike Bloom*field*, he's a Chicago blues guitar player."
- Albert Grossman: Okay, I can't get him tomorrow. I can get another guitar player.
- Bob Dylan: No! I don't want any of your old session musicians, man. I want young guys with hair on their heads. A guitar player, and a bass player, an organ player and a drum player.
- Albert Grossman: I'm gonna try my best but I can't guarantee that we're gonna get him tomorrow.
- Bob Dylan: I don't wanna hear it. Get it done.
- [Bob slams down receiver.]
- Bob Dylan: I thought you left town already.
- Johnny Cash: [Inebriated, dropping his car keys on the ground.] No, we loaded up last night. June left for New York with her mama. Pete asked me to stay for the finale, you know. I couldn't sleep, took a drive, saw the ocean.
- Bob Dylan: Okay.
- Toshi Seeger: [Calling out to him as Bob Dylan and his band starts to leave at the end of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival] Bob. Bob!
- Bob Dylan: Gig's over, Toshi.
- Toshi Seeger: [Stepping in front of her husband as he approaches a row of axes at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival] Pete!
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