The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change.
TOM WAITSSongs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air.
More Tom Waits Quotes
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Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don’t care if they lose it; they’ll just make another one.
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You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you.
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The piano has been drinking, not me.
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Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
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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.
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She’s got the whole dark forest living inside of her.
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The dog won’t bite if you beat Him with a bone.
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Don’t plant your days they turn into weeds.
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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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I was always laughing in church.
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New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.
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I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.
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There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
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When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.
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We have a deficit of wonder right now.
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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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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.
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The earth is not my home, I’m just passing by.
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Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.
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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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I’m just trying to make a buck like everyone else.
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I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong – I have audio illusions.
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For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.
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And the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming.
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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.
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Don’t look back, because someone might be gaining on you.
TOM WAITS