Tom Waits Quotes

You have to keep busy. After all, no dog’s ever pissed on a moving car.
TOM WAITS

Busy Car Dog Move Yourself
I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.
TOM WAITS

Hate Myself Prime
You’ve gotta have somebody to trust, that knows a lot.
TOM WAITS

Known Trust Yourself
I 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.
TOM WAITS

Fingers Freedom Instrument Myself Vocal Word
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

Appreciation Greatness Music Myself Vocabulary
There’s a beauty of show business. It’s the only business you can have a career in when you’re dead.
TOM WAITS

Beautiful Business Career Death Show Yourself
it ain’t no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones
TOM WAITS

Bone Dance Sin Skin Yourself
Well you say that it’s gospel, But I know that it’s only church.
TOM WAITS

Gospel Myself Religious Yourself
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

Arithmetic Boat Finding Hands Hold Myself Ocean
All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes
TOM WAITS

Donut Name Prostitute Sound
Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?
TOM WAITS

Devil God Sleep World
You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her.
TOM WAITS

Herself Learning Woman
The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
TOM WAITS

Action Style Way Yourself
But it’s so hard to dance that way when it’s cold and there’s no music.
TOM WAITS

Cold Dance Hard Music Way
I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
TOM WAITS

Music Myself Song Wind
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

Guard Life Myself Ocean Play
I don’t like hearing Beatles songs in commercials. It almost renders them useless. I think, ‘Oh God, another one bites the dust.’
TOM WAITS

Commercial Oneself Song
Don’t look back, because someone might be gaining on you.
TOM WAITS

Back Sight 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
You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you.
TOM WAITS

Children Learning Yourself
They say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with. And they say that like it’s a bad thing.
TOM WAITS

Bad Difficult Myself Work
I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
TOM WAITS

Freedom Myself Science
I never told the truth so i can never tell a lie.
TOM WAITS

Lying Myself Talk Truth
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 Universe is making music all the time.
TOM WAITS

Music Time Universe
I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong. I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.
TOM WAITS

Hear Ideas Myself Wrong
But then I’m one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.
TOM WAITS

Afraid Conversation Death Live Music Telephone

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