black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong – I have audio illusions.

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

Best Better Care Children Growth Oneself
The dog won’t bite if you beat Him with a bone.
TOM WAITS

Beat Bite Bone Dog Yourself
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
Don’t plant your days they turn into weeds.
TOM WAITS

Day Plant Yourself
I don’t think that you should be perfectly candid and frank about the intimate details of your personal life with the public at large. Subsequently, it creates considerable personal problems.
TOM WAITS

Detail Intimate Myself Perfection Problem Thinking
Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.
TOM WAITS

Fall Kind Yourself
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
Don’t look back, because someone might be gaining on you.
TOM WAITS

Back Sight Yourself
I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
TOM WAITS

Music Myself Song Wind
I like Thelonious Monk, he’s so gnarled, he’s like a piece of machinery that’s pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own.
TOM WAITS

Floor Machine Myself Pieces
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
We have a deficit of wonder right now.
TOM WAITS

Imagination Right Wonder
All that you’ve loved is all you own.
TOM WAITS

Love One Liner Yourself
You’re my North Star when I’m lost and feeling blue.
TOM WAITS

Love Relationship Romantic Star Yourself
Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.
TOM WAITS

Capture End Feature Song Writing
If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man.
TOM WAITS

Cruelty Kind Man Oneself
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
The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change.
TOM WAITS

Average Change Life Person Time Traffic
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

Alive Hands Ideas Music Time Yourself
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
There’s no prayer like desire.
TOM WAITS

Desire One Liner Prayer
If I exorcise my devils, all my angels may go, too.
TOM WAITS

Angel Devil Myself
I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong. I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.
TOM WAITS

Hear Ideas Myself Wrong
Most of the things you absorb you will ultimately secrete.
TOM WAITS

Absorb Willing Yourself
The trick is to have a career and have a family. It’s like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.
TOM WAITS

Career Family Night Trick Yourself
I was always laughing in church.
TOM WAITS

Laughter Myself Religious
On my gravestone, I want it to say, “I told you I was sick.”
TOM WAITS

Funny Grave Myself Sick

I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong – I have audio illusions.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong – I have audio illusions.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Tom Waits Quotes