Robert Polito > Quotes

“I need a life that isn’t just about needing to escape my life.”
― Robert Polito

“Noir: all those beautiful sentences telling you the most terrible things.”
― Robert Polito

“Remember: if you can see the Empire State Building,
The Empire State Building can see you.”
― Robert Polito, Hollywood & God

“Nobody could just learn this stuff, and it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns . . . that I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn’t have allowed before, that I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale . . . that things had become too familiar and that I might have to disorientate myself. . . . I can’t say I’d seen any performances that were like spiritual experiences until I went to Lomax’s loft. I pondered it. I wasn’t ready to act on any of it but I knew somehow, though, that if I wanted to stay playing music, that I would have to claim a larger part of myself.”
― Robert Polito, After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan's Memory Palace

“After the Flood more precisely arcs from his Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on February 20, 1991, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City through his 2021–2024 Rough and Rowdy Ways tour.”
― Robert Polito, After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan's Memory Palace

“We are always striving in the wake of prior narratives,” as John Keene proposes in Punks.”
― Robert Polito, After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan's Memory Palace