I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.
TOM WAITSMy 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.
More Tom Waits Quotes
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Well you say that it’s gospel, But I know that it’s only church.
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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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it ain’t no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones
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.
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I’ve lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.
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But then I’m one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.
TOM WAITS -
I like vocal word stuff. But I don’t always write with an instrument, I usually write a capella. It’s more like drawing in the air with your fingers. It’s closest to the choreography of a bee. You’re freer.
TOM WAITS -
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 -
We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.
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 -
I made a wish on a sliver of moonlight A sly grin and a bowl full of stars.
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They say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with. And they say that like it’s a bad thing.
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And the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming.
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The beginning of it starts at the end.
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I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.
TOM WAITS