George Harrison of the Beatles:
"Dylan is so brilliant. To me, he makes William Shakespeare look like Billy Joel."

Alex Ross:
"If you look through what has been written about Bob Dylan in the past thirty-odd years, you notice a desire for him to die off, so that his younger self can assume its mythic place."

Andrew Motion, British Poet Laureate:
"He's one of the great artists of the century. He comes on the scene at a very high level, then (with a few glitches here and there) extends himself steadily --- usually staying one step ahead of his audience. [Enumerating what it is about Dylan that he especially likes:] The concentration and surprise of his lyrics; the beauty of his melodies (and the rasp of his anger); the dramatic sympathy between the words and the music; the range of his devotions; the power of self-renewal; his wit; his surrealism; the truth to experience... [Speaking of how Dylan's lyrics, unlike most rock lyrics, can stand alone without their music:] He doesn't (as Robert Lowell said he did) 'lean on the crutch of his guitar.'"

Johnny Cash:
"I love Bob Dylan, I really do. I love his early work, I love the first time he plugged in electrically, I love his Christian albums, I love his other albums."

Dave Matthews:
[Asked to name his favorites.] "It wouldn't be fair if I didn't name every Dylan record. It almost makes me furious sometimes, how good his lyrics are. You know, you aspire to things. I'm trying and trying [to write a song], and I'll get something and I'll say, 'That's pretty good,' and then I'll listen to Blood On the Tracks and think 'Who the hell am I kidding? What the hell am I talking about?' 'Come in, she said / I'll give you / shelter from the storm.' Asshole!"

Jeff Tweedy of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco:
"Overall, Dylan's probably my favorite of everyone. The Basement Tapes are something I can't get enough of and all the unoffical, unreleased basement tapes too. Desire is one of my favorite records of all time."

Luc Sante, author and teacher at Bard College, New York:
"Dylan is a complex, mercurial human being of astounding gifts, whose purposes are usually ambiguous, frequently elusive, and sometimes downright unguessable. At the same time he is a sort of communicating vessel, open to currents that run up and down the ages quite outside the confines of the popular culture of any given period."

Tom Waits:
"With Dylan, so much has been said about him, it's difficult to say anything about him that hasn't already been said, and say it better. Suffice it to say Dylan is a planet to be explored. For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in - so the bootlegs I obtained in the Sixties and Seventies, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me. His journey as a songwriter is the stuff of myth, because he lives within the ether of the songs. Hail, hail The Basement Tapes. I heard most of these songs on bootlegs first. There is a joy and an abandon to this record; it's also a history lesson."

Paul Simon:
"I don't think [Dylan and the Beatles] influenced me a lot. I think it was inevitable; they were so powerful that you couldn't really escape the influence... As for Bob, I don't know. He's like the most mysterious of all the people of our generation. He's sort of impenetrable, really."