black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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
We are all just monkeys with money and guns.
TOM WAITS

Monkey Reality Weapon
I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.
TOM WAITS

Affect Audience Believe Important Myself Way
I’m just trying to make a buck like everyone else.
TOM WAITS

Money Myself
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
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
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.
TOM WAITS

Learning Listening Oneself Song Wonder Writing
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
Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.
TOM WAITS

Fall Kind Yourself
If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man.
TOM WAITS

Cruelty Kind Man Oneself
Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?
TOM WAITS

Devil God Sleep World
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

Angel Blind Finding Hard Myself Selfish
I’ll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.
TOM WAITS

Initial Myself Scratch
You’re innocent when you dream.
TOM WAITS

Dreams Innocence Yourself
I did my time in the jail of your arms.
TOM WAITS

Arms Time Yourself
Mostly 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.
TOM WAITS

Blind Imagination Myself Need Reality Requirement
The earth is not my home, I’m just passing by.
TOM WAITS

Earth Home Myself Philosophy Travel Wisdom
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.
TOM WAITS

Appreciation Greatness Music Myself Vocabulary
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
Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
TOM WAITS

Funny Instrument Musician Myself
You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her.
TOM WAITS

Herself Learning Woman
I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.
TOM WAITS

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

Funny Grave Myself Sick
The Universe is making music all the time.
TOM WAITS

Music Time Universe
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
I guess I’ve always lived upside down when I want things I can’t have.
TOM WAITS

Live Myself
A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.
TOM WAITS

Dumb Intelligence Mental

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Tom Waits Quotes