It is Dylan's work as a composer … that has won him a wider audience than his singing alone might have. Whether concerned with cosmic spectres or personal conundrums, Dylan's lyrics are pungently idiomatic. He has a superb ear for speech rhythms, a generally astute sense of selective detail, and a natural storyteller's command of narrative pacing. His songs sound as if they were being created out of oral street history rather than carefully written in tranquillity. (p. 78)

Nat Hentoff, "The Crackin', Shakin', Breakin' Sounds," in The New Yorker (© 1964 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), October 24, 1964, pp. 64-90.