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There’s a beauty of show business. It’s the only business you can have a career in when you’re dead.

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.
TOM WAITS

Abundance Bury Happiness Information Quantity Wealth Weight
I’ll tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past.
TOM WAITS

Lying Myself Past Secret
Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
TOM WAITS

Funny Instrument Musician Myself
Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air.
TOM WAITS

Air Interest Song
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

Ability Confidence Important Music Rough Thinking Yourself
When your down on your luck and you’ve lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans.
TOM WAITS

Down Dreams Luck Yourself
Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don’t get out much. It’s true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.
TOM WAITS

Admire Death Feeling People
The blues is like a planet. It’s an enormous topic. You can’t ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It’s a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don’t know where I would be. It’s indelible and indispensable.
TOM WAITS

Culture Known Music Myself Planet Topic
I don’t like the stigma that comes with being called a poet. So I call what I’m doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.
TOM WAITS

Adventure Call Improvisation Myself Poet
We have a deficit of wonder right now.
TOM WAITS

Imagination Right Wonder
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

Blind Imagination Myself Need Reality Requirement
I dunno when I started writing really. I was, like, filling out applications and stuff real early. Last name first, first name last, sex. ‘occasionally’ , stuff like that. Then I was writing letters, filling out forms, writing on bathroom walls.
TOM WAITS

Application Fill Myself Sex Start Writing
Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?
TOM WAITS

Devil God Sleep World
There’s no prayer like desire.
TOM WAITS

Desire One Liner Prayer
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

Allow Fact Myself People Rumor Yourself
It’s rather mystifying when you think about writing songs – where they come from, and how they’re born.
TOM WAITS

Born Mysterious Thinking Writing Yourself

There’s a beauty of show business. It’s the only business you can have a career in when you’re dead.

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There’s a beauty of show business. It’s the only business you can have a career in when you’re dead.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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