“It’s a gypsy song written during a gypsy festival in the south of France one summer. Somebody took me there to the gypsy high holy days which coincide with my own particular birthday. So somebody took me to a birthday party there once, and hanging out there for a week probably influenced the writing of that song.  But the “valley below” probably came from someplace else. My feeling about the song was that the verses came from someplace else. It wasn’t about anything, so this “valley below” thing became the fixture to hang it on. But “valley below” could mean anything.”Bob Dylan (47)

“That was a song that meant something to Jacques Levy (co-writer). It just seemed to take on a life of its own as another view of history.”Bob Dylan (48)

“I’ve said before that song’s got nothing to do with being anti-war. It has more to do with the military industrial complex that Eisenhower was talking about [Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961 – Ed].”Bob Dylan (542)

“”Idiot Wind” is a little bit of both [anger and sentimentality – Ed] because it uses all the textures of strict philosophy but basically it’s a shattered philosophy that doesn’t have a title, and it’s driven across with will power. Will power is what you’re responding to.”Bob Dylan (543)

“It’s just about that. I think that’s something I mighta taken out of the newspaper. Mighta seen a picture of one in a department store window. There’s really no more to it than that. I know it can get blown up into some kind of illusion. But in reality, it’s no more than that. Just a leopard skin pillbox. That’s all.”Bob Dylan (545)

“[The song ‘Joey’ was an old idea of Levy’s which Dylan picked up on, motivated especially by conversation during dinner one evening with Marta Aurbach, a New York authoress who is currently working on a book about Joey Gallo, the New York Mafia figure who was gunned down in 1970 – Ed.] She and her husband knew Joey well and I knew Joey through them,” said Levy. “I spent a lot of time with Joey in that last year he was alive, and Bob became very interested in it all. We were telling stories about Joey, and when we left their house we came back here and started to work on it.”Jacques Levy (661)

“‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ I think, was inspired by Bruce Langhorne. Bruce was playing guitar with me on a bunch of the early records. On one session, Tom Wilson had asked him to play tambourine. And he had this gigantic tambourine. It was like, really big. It was as big as a wagon-wheel. He was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind. He was one of those characters … he was like that. I don’t know if I’ve ever told him that.”Bob Dylan (1053)