The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.

Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent 'Basement Tapes' will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson's reasons for the destruction of the tapes for 'Smile.'

The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan.

There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas.

You can scroll through my iTunes and I've got everything. I've got Ace Hood, Alt-J, Annie Lennox, Arctic Monkeys, Beanie Sigel, the Beatles, Beth Hart, Big Sean, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver, Chief Keef, Coldplay, the Flaming Lips, Mariah Carey, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, OutKast, Pet Shop Boys, Peter Gabriel, the Smiths, and the list goes on from there.

My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl.

In high school - that's when I first fell in love with his music and his voice. 'Blonde on Blonde' above everything. I vaguely remember 'Desire' coming out. I definitely remember 'Street Legal' and 'Slow Train Coming.' The first time I saw Dylan was on that tour: '79 in L.A.

Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry.

In 1962, I wrote a series about 42nd Street called 'Welcome to Lostville.' One result was that the young Bob Dylan read it and invited me to his first concert at Town Hall; the result was a kind of friendship that years later led to my liner notes for 'Blood on the Tracks.'

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They're my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He's just really cool.

I love Bob Dylan. Who doesn't? He tapped into some kind of vein and it keeps on keeping on. There's nobody like him. He's unique, and just... way out cool.

In other words, I'd say the whole story of Bob Dylan is one man's search for God. The turns and the steps he takes to find God are his business. I think he went to a study group at the Vineyard, and it created a lot of excitement.

I timed my previous wife's pregnancy to the moment to have my son born on Bob Dylan's 50th birthday. There is no bigger Bob Dylan fan than me. You don't just time the day and impregnate your wife to get your kid to be born on Bob Dylan's 50th birthday.

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

Dylan Jerome," the lawyer admits, "wanted to sue God for not caring enough about him.

The Chicago historian Studs Terkel asked Bob Dylan in the sixties about how he went about writing a song and trying to outdo himself, or at least being as good as the last song he wrote, and his response was pretty damn perfect. "I'm content with the same old piece of wood," he said. "I just want to find another place to pound a nail?.?.?. Music, my writing, is something special, not sacred." If the songs Bob Dylan wrote aren't sacred, then nobody's songs are sacred. Nobody's. No one has ever laid on their deathbed thinking, "Thank God I didn't make that song. Thank God I didn't make that piece of art. Thank God I avoided the embarrassment of putting a bad poem into the world." Nobody reaches the end of their life and regrets even a single moment of creating something, no matter how shitty or unappreciated that something might have been. I'm writing this just weeks after returning from Belleville, where I sat next to my dad's bed in my childhood house and watched him die. I can guarantee you that in the final moments of his life, he wasn't kicking himself for all those times when he dared to make a fool of himself by singing too loud.

And Flock Rule Number Two is, Don't argue with Max or you'll live to regret it." I spun and stomped out to the clearing, turning back for one last jab at Dylan. "And by the way, you clearly DON'T know me better than Fang does. Do you see Fang arguing with me? No, you do not.

Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want (Bob Dylan's dad)

Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent 'Basement Tapes' will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson's reasons for the destruction of the tapes for 'Smile.'

My father had wanted to name me for Dylan Thomas. He had seen him speak on one of those drunken poetry tours he did.

There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas.

I like men who are very cool but who are also so brilliant that they are almost insane. Sean Penn Gary Oldman Bob Dylan Tom Waits - men who would be flipping burgers if they hadn't found an outlet for their brilliant mind-sets.

I'm like 'Would you be the person in the room that would boo when Dylan went electric? I know I wouldn't. Or are you the person that left The Beatles after 'She Loves You ' or 'Drive My Car?' You weren't on board for 'Revolution 9' or 'Day In The Life ' were you?'

We are at a crossroads in the music business: with the rise of the internet the world we live in has changed and the past is not coming back. But I see the glass as half-full: the internet and social networking are new avenues for the next Bob Dylan to be born on.