"Love Minus Zero/No Limit" (read "Love Minus Zero over No Limit") is a song written by Bob Dylan for his fifth studio album Bringing It All Back Home, released in 1965. Its main musical hook is a series of three descending chords, while its lyrics articulate Dylan's feelings for his lover, and have been interpreted as describing how she brings a needed zen-like calm to his chaotic world. The song uses surreal imagery, which some authors and critics have suggested recalls Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and the biblical Book of Daniel. Critics have also remarked that the style of the lyrics is reminiscent of William Blake's poem "The Sick Rose".

Dylan has performed "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" live on several of his tours. Since its initial appearance on Bringing It All Back Home, live versions of the song have been released on a number of Dylan's albums, including Bob Dylan at Budokan, MTV Unplugged (European versions), and The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue, as well as on the reissued Concert for Bangladesh album by George Harrison & Friends. Live video performances have been included on the Concert for Bangladesh and Other Side of the Mirror: Live at Newport Folk Festival 1963–1965 DVD releases.

Artists who have covered "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" include Ricky Nelson, Buck Owens, the Turtles, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart. Eric Clapton played it at Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration.

The version of the song that appears on Bringing It All Back Home was recorded on January 14, 1965 and was produced by Tom Wilson.[1] This version was recorded by the full rock band that Dylan used to accompany him on the songs that appeared on side one of the album, and features a prominent electric guitar part played by Bruce Langhorne.[1][2][3] However, like the other love song on side one, "She Belongs to Me", "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" had been recorded a day earlier in various acoustic configurations, and one of these takes was a strong contender to be included on the album.[1] The January 13, 1965 recordings and a first take from January 14 were released on the 6-disc and 18-disc versions of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 in 2015.[4]

Author and music critic Richie Unterberger has called the song, "one of the more tuneful and accessible tracks" on the album, with a prominent series of three descending diatonic chords providing the main hook.[5][6] Critic Robert Shelton has described the music as soothing, so that the love expressed seems tranquil, even when images such as cloaks and daggers and trembling bridges are evoked by the lyrics.[7] The tune and rhythm have a Latin feel and the lyrical rhyming pattern varies from verse to verse.[5][8] For example, in the first verse, the first and second lines rhyme, the fourth and eighth lines rhyme, and the sixth and seventh lines rhyme, but the third and fifth lines are unrhymed.[8] But in the second verse, the first three lines rhyme.[8] Throughout the song, the rhymes are sometimes approximate; for example "another" is rhymed with "bother" and "trembles" is rhymed with "rambles."[8]

The first verse of the song has the singer infatuated with a woman, admiring her inner strength.[9] 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.[9] Author Andy Gill has commented that the final image of the lover being like some raven at the singer's window with a broken wing recalls Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", but is also a symbol of the lover's vulnerability in spite of her strength.[9] Author Anthony Varesi has remarked that the broken wing may also be a reference to the woman's need for shelter, or else to a flaw in her.[11] According to Dylan critics Oliver Trager and Marcus Gray, 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.[12][13] Wilfrid Mellers has suggested that the song's surreal images anticipate the psychedelic songs Dylan would later write.[6]

The original title of the song was "Dime Store", which originates from the line "In the dime stores and bus stations..."[1] 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.[1][12] Therefore, the correct pronunciation of the song's title is "Love Minus Zero over No Limit".[16] This has been interpreted by Trager as "absolutely unlimited love."[12] Trager also noted that the title is based on gambling terminology which would mean that all love is a risk