DESCRIPTION:
"Love Minus Zero/No Limit" was written as a tribute to Dylan's future wife Sara Lowndes. The lyrics reflect her Zen-like detachment through a series of opposites, for example, that she "speaks like silence" and is both "like ice" and "like fire".Another famous line from the song also captures this dichotomy: "She knows there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all."

The first verse of the song has the singer infatuated with the woman, admiring her inner strength.The three remaining verses reflect the inauthentic chaos that the singer has to deal with in the outside world, from which the lover's Zen-like calm provides needed refuge.The final image is of the lover being like some raven at the singer's window with a broken wing. This image recalls Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", but is also a symbol of the lover's vulnerability in spite of her strength.The broken wing may also be a reference to the woman's need for shelter, or else to a flaw in her.The style of the song's lyrics are comparable to William Blake's poem, "The Sick Rose", in their economy of language and use of a detached tone to express the narrator's intense emotional experience. The song's surreal images anticipate the psychedelic songs Dylan would later write.

Some of the song's images evoke prophecies from the Biblical Book of Daniel.For example, the line:

Statues made of matchsticks
Crumble into one another

is reminiscent of Daniel's prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar would build a statue of precious metals only to see it crumble like "chaff". Another line in the song states that people "Draw conclusions on the wall." Drawing conclusions on the wall rather than from the wall evokes the story from the Book of Daniel where a hand writes on a wall the words "MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN," warning that the Neo-Babylonian Empire was about to end.

One interpretation of the lover in this song, as well as that which features in "She Belongs to Me", is that she is Dylan's muse. In each song, the inaccessibility of the lover/muse can be interpreted as Dylan's acknowledgment of his own limitations—limitations that he attempts to overcome in writing the songs. In this interpretation, the final raven image sitting at the window can be viewed as a symbol of the muse's inaccessibility, and the raven's broken wing a symbol of its wildness. A related interpretation is that the song reflects an artist's "self-awareness through isolation." The line "She knows there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all" can be seen as a reflection of the isolation of the American writer.

The original title of the song was "Dime Store", which originates from the line "In the dime stores and bus stations..." The official title "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" is, according to Dylan, a fraction with "Love Minus Zero" on the top and "No Limit" on the bottom, and this is how the title appeared on early pressings of the Bringing It All Back Home LP. In theory, the resulting quotient would be equal to "absolutely unlimited love." The title is also based on gambling terminology that would mean that all love is a risk.

Love Minus Zero/No Limit

Words and music Bob Dylan
Released on Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
Tabbed by Eyolf Østrem

Dylan's guitar is in dropped C tuning (C-A-d-g-b-e') with a capo on the 4th fret (sounding key E major) and with the following chords:

C 032010
G(7) 220001
F 003211 or 033211
Dm x00231

C
My love she speaks like silence,
G F C
Without ideals or violence,
G F C
She doesn't have to say she's faithful,
Dm F G
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire.
C
People carry roses,
G F C
And make promises by the hours,
G F C
My love she laughs like the flowers,
Dm G C
Valentines can't buy her.

In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all.

The cloak and dagger dangles,
Madams light the candles.
In ceremonies of the horsemen,
Even the pawn must hold a grudge.
Statues made of match sticks,
Crumble into one another,
My love winks, she does not bother,
She knows too much to argue or to judge.

The bridge at midnight trembles,
The country doctor rambles,
Bankers' nieces seek perfection,
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.
The wind howls like a hammer,
The night blows cold and rainy,
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing.