The folks who know the truth aren’t talking. The ones who don’t have a clue, you can’t shut them up!
TOM WAITSMostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
More Tom Waits Quotes
-
-
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 -
Time is just memory Mixed in with Desire.
TOM WAITS -
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.
TOM WAITS -
Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.
TOM WAITS -
I’m the type of guy who’d sell you a rat’s asshole for a wedding ring.
TOM WAITS -
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.
TOM WAITS -
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 -
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.
TOM WAITS -
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 -
The Universe is making music all the time.
TOM WAITS -
Well you say that it’s gospel, But I know that it’s only church.
TOM WAITS -
I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong – I have audio illusions.
TOM WAITS -
You can drive out nature with a pitch fork But it always comes roaring back again.
TOM WAITS -
I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.
TOM WAITS -
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.
TOM WAITS