Townes Van Zandt ranks alongside Kris Kristofferson and…

I was 21, and I was like, "Man, am I really gonna start over and try this whole thing over again? Do I want…

— Taylor Goldsmith

I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob…

— Steve Earle

I think Bob Dylan's a good songwriter. I think he's the best songwriter in the world probably.

— Chrissie Hynde

If Woody Guthrie set the bar for American songwriters, Bob Dylan jumped right over it. No one I know will ever come close to…

— John Mellencamp

From the moment [Bob] Dylan arrived as a songwriter, he was [so] much better than everybody else around.

— Steve Earle

The [Nobel] prize is for literature.[Bob] Dylan is a songwriter. Here is where the argument starts to get interesting, because here is where it…

— David Bennun

I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the…

— Leonard Cohen

The confessional singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s was in full swing, and Bob Dylan's emotional album [ Blood on the Tracks] resonated with the…

— Bob Dylan

When I was 12 years old, or however old I was when Bringing It All Back Home came out, I'd just skip back and…

— Rodney Crowell

I first met (Bob Dylan) in '65. We've had a friendship for a long time. He decided to play on a record I was…

— Doug Sahm

Producing Bob Dylan was pretty much a spectator sport.

— Al Kooper

That's who I wanted to be like was Bob Dylan.

— Kris Kristofferson

The most recent incarnation of [Bob] Dylan has been the traveling journeyman/ charlatan who sings roots music, snarls dark lyrics that make "All Along…

— Jay Michaelson

I like men who are very cool but who are also so brilliant that they are almost insane. Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, Bob Dylan,…

— Jolene Blalock

Except in these latter-day songs, [Bob] Dylan is a grizzled old prophet who's already been to hell and back.

— Jay Michaelson