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I’m trying to get music ideas that come and keep them alive. It’s like carrying water in your hands. I want to keep it all, and sometimes by the time you get to the studio you have nothing.

Tom Waits

Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you’re dead.
TOM WAITS

Death Drive Man Trust Yourself
The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change.
TOM WAITS

Average Change Life Person Time Traffic
You can drive out nature with a pitch fork But it always comes roaring back again.
TOM WAITS

Drive Nature Roar Yourself
A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.
TOM WAITS

Dumb Intelligence Mental
Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air.
TOM WAITS

Air Interest Song
I’m not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here.
TOM WAITS

Fight Justice Myself World
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

Break Cry Hard Time Laughter Life People Situation Worst Yourself
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
My wife called me a mule. She once said, “I didn’t marry a man; I married a mule!” I kept thinking about it. It was in the back of my head. I think it makes a good title for an album.
TOM WAITS

Animal Goodness Man Marriage Myself Thinking Wife
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’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
TOM WAITS

Freedom Myself Science
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
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.
TOM WAITS

Couple Myself Song Thinking Weather
I do some acting. And there’s a difference between “I do some acting” and “I’m an actor.”
TOM WAITS

Act Actor Difference Myself
Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.
TOM WAITS

Fall Kind Yourself
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

I’m trying to get music ideas that come and keep them alive. It’s like carrying water in your hands. I want to keep it all, and sometimes by the time you get to the studio you have nothing.

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I’m trying to get music ideas that come and keep them alive. It’s like carrying water in your hands. I want to keep it all, and sometimes by the time you get to the studio you have nothing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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