"Hard Rain is a desperate kind of song. It was written during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when those who allowed themselves to think of the possible results of the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontation were chilled by the imminence of oblivion. Every line in it is actually the start of a whole song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn't have time enough alive to write all those songs, so I put all I could into this one."

- Bob Dylan