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 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
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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.
TOM WAITS -
Got a head full of lightning, a hat full of rain.
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 -
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 -
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 -
When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.
TOM WAITS -
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.
TOM WAITS -
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 -
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 -
Most people don’t care if you’re telling them the truth or if you’re telling them a lie, as long as they’re entertained by it.
TOM WAITS -
Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
TOM WAITS -
If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man.
TOM WAITS -
I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.
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.
TOM WAITS -
Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.
TOM WAITS