Dilov was born in Cherven Bryag, Kingdom of Bulgaria in 1927. His father was a teacher, journalist and playwright inspired by the Bulgarian Enlightenment and the September Uprising. Dilov writes of his father: "good in character, impractical, and actively dreamy, probably naive, because so much kindness can not but be naive, he all his life he threw himself at being useful to people. As a result, we lived almost like Romani. Throughout the year, we moved with a horse-cart from rental to rental in Sofia, and each time the owners keeping the better part of our luggage because of the unpaid rent. Accordingly, I moved from school to school, so that today I have neither fond memories of that time nor close friends from the school years, which sometimes makes me feel almost like a person without a childhood and without roots." Dilov attended the school "Neofit Bozveli", where his father was a teacher, in the poverty-stricken "Vasil Levski" quarter of Sofia. Dilov's two-year old brother died during this time.