Living with kids is like living with a bunch of drunks. You know you really have to be on your toes all the time. Things are falling over and breaking and spilling. If you live on the second story, you really have to keep the windows shut all the time.
TOM WAITSI like vocal word stuff. But I don’t always write with an instrument, I usually write a capella. It’s more like drawing in the air with your fingers. It’s closest to the choreography of a bee. You’re freer.
More Tom Waits Quotes
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I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.
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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.
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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.
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I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
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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.
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We have a deficit of wonder right now.
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The beginning of it starts at the end.
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Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.
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The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
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I’m the type of guy who’d sell you a rat’s asshole for a wedding ring.
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I never told the truth so i can never tell a lie.
TOM WAITS -
Slept all night in the cedar grove, I was born to ramble, born to rove, some men are searchin’ for the holy grail, but there ain’t nothin’ sweeter than ridin’ the rails.
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The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change.
TOM WAITS -
We are all just monkeys with money and guns.
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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.
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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.
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People get frightened that success is going to take them out of life. They’re no longer going to be on the corner of Bedlam and Squalor; life will only be something you can get through the mail.
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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.
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New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.
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And the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming.
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You’ve gotta have somebody to trust, that knows a lot.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The trick is to have a career and have a family. It’s like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.
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The ocean doesn’t want me today, But I’ll come back tomorrow to play. The riptide is waging And the life guard’s away But the ocean doesn’t want me today.
TOM WAITS