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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

Don’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.
TOM WAITS

Bad Day Growth Plant Yourself
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
The devil knows the Bible like the back of his hand.
TOM WAITS

Bible Devil Hands Himself Religious
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 guess I’ve always lived upside down when I want things I can’t have.
TOM WAITS

Live Myself
The piano has been drinking, not me.
TOM WAITS

Drink Funny Instrument Myself Piano
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
Don’t look back, because someone might be gaining on you.
TOM WAITS

Back Sight 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
If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it’s good. I’m not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don’t cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don’t stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you’ll never see it again.
TOM WAITS

Market Myself Nervous Open People See Yourself
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.
TOM WAITS

People Scare Success Yourself
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
I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.
TOM WAITS

Inspirational Myself Poor Reach Start
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
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’ll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.
TOM WAITS

Initial Myself Scratch

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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