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There’s nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you’re not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I’m the worst. I’m the worst at that.

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

People Scare Success Yourself
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
I put food on the table and roof overhead. But I’d trade it all tomorrow for the highway instead.
TOM WAITS

Food High Myself Table Trade
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.
TOM WAITS

Animal Goodness Man Marriage Myself Thinking Wife
Bill Hicks – blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built.
TOM WAITS

Brain Built Drive Himself Road Specialist Vision Willing
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
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you’re dead.
TOM WAITS

Death Drive Man Trust Yourself
Got a head full of lightning, a hat full of rain.
TOM WAITS

Head Rain
When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.
TOM WAITS

Age Myself Old Quite Young
Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah, I drunk me a river since you tore me apart.
TOM WAITS

Bad Body Drink Heart Myself
Living with kids is like living with a bunch of drunks. You know you really have to be on your toes all the time. Things are falling over and breaking and spilling. If you live on the second story, you really have to keep the windows shut all the time.
TOM WAITS

Break Children Fall Live Time Window 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
I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
TOM WAITS

Music Myself Song Wind
Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.
TOM WAITS

Friendship Pain Reality
There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
TOM WAITS

Advice Deep Food Freedom Trap
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

There’s nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you’re not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I’m the worst. I’m the worst at that.

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There’s nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you’re not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I’m the worst. I’m the worst at that.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Tom Waits Quotes