The Universe is making music all the time.
TOM WAITSI’ve seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train.
More Tom Waits Quotes
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You have to keep busy. After all, no dog’s ever pissed on a moving car.
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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.
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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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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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There’s no prayer like desire.
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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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Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
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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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There’s a beauty of show business. It’s the only business you can have a career in when you’re dead.
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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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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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Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.
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The beginning of it starts at the end.
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Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah, I drunk me a river since you tore me apart.
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I admit that I ain’t no angel, I admit that I ain’t no saint – I’m selfish and I’m cruel and I’m blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave they’re so hard to find.
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When you’re writing‚ you’re conjuring. It’s a ritual‚ and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you’re inviting into the room.
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I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong – I have audio illusions.
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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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Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell ’em to do that, they’ll find a little pot of gold.
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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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Their memory’s like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can’t remember Tell the things you can’t forget that History puts a saint in every dream.
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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.
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I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.
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Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air.
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I can’t listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You’re just processing too much, there’s no place to put it. If you go a long time without hearing music, then you hear music that nobody else hears.
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If you get far enough away you’ll be on your way back home.
TOM WAITS