You’ve gotta have somebody to trust, that knows a lot.
TOM WAITSI always thought songs are movies for the ears and films are like songs for the eyes.
More Tom Waits Quotes
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I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.
TOM WAITS -
You know, we just buy music now. We don’t make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think it’s so important that people develop and subscribe to and have confidence in their own ability to make music, however rough it is.
TOM WAITS -
I can’t listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You’re just processing too much, there’s no place to put it. If you go a long time without hearing music, then you hear music that nobody else hears.
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The dog won’t bite if you beat Him with a bone.
TOM WAITS -
Don’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.
TOM WAITS -
I like Thelonious Monk, he’s so gnarled, he’s like a piece of machinery that’s pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own.
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 -
I’ll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.
TOM WAITS -
Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?
TOM WAITS -
There’s nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you’re not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I’m the worst. I’m the worst at that.
TOM WAITS -
Arithmetic arithmetock Turn the hands back on the clock How does the ocean rock the boat? How did the razor find my throat? The only strings that hold me here Are tangled up around the pier.
TOM WAITS -
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.
TOM WAITS -
For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.
TOM WAITS -
I’ll tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past.
TOM WAITS -
I don’t go to church on Sunday, don’t get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way
TOM WAITS






