I did my time in the jail of your arms.
TOM WAITSDon’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me – choke those little bad days. Choke ’em down to nothing.
More Tom Waits Quotes
-
-
Well you say that it’s gospel, But I know that it’s only church.
TOM WAITS -
When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.
TOM WAITS -
Their memory’s like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can’t remember Tell the things you can’t forget that History puts a saint in every dream.
TOM WAITS -
The fact is most of the things that people know about me are made up. My own life is backstage. So what you “know” about me is only what I allowed you to know about me.
TOM WAITS -
It’s very hard to stop doing things you’re used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.
TOM WAITS -
You got to tell me the brave captain Why are the wicked so strong? How do the angels get to sleep When the devil leaves the porch light on?
TOM WAITS -
The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
TOM WAITS -
I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.
TOM WAITS -
Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
TOM WAITS -
I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I’m a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.
TOM WAITS -
We are all just monkeys with money and guns.
TOM WAITS -
We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.
TOM WAITS -
If I exorcise my devils, all my angels may go, too.
TOM WAITS -
Never have your wallet with you onstage. It’s bad luck. You shouldn’t play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.
TOM WAITS -
Time is just memory Mixed in with Desire.
TOM WAITS -
I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
TOM WAITS -
I’ll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.
TOM WAITS -
I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
TOM WAITS -
Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.
TOM WAITS -
I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.
TOM WAITS -
it ain’t no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones
TOM WAITS -
I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.
TOM WAITS -
If you get far enough away you’ll be on your way back home.
TOM WAITS -
You’re innocent when you dream.
TOM WAITS -
Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
TOM WAITS -
I put food on the table and roof overhead. But I’d trade it all tomorrow for the highway instead.
TOM WAITS