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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

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

Dumb Intelligence Mental
I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.
TOM WAITS

Couple Myself Song Thinking Weather
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
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you’re dead.
TOM WAITS

Death Drive Man Trust 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
Well you say that it’s gospel, But I know that it’s only church.
TOM WAITS

Gospel Myself Religious Yourself
The ocean doesn’t want me today, But I’ll come back tomorrow to play. The riptide is waging And the life guard’s away But the ocean doesn’t want me today.
TOM WAITS

Guard Life Myself Ocean Play
Their memory’s like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can’t remember Tell the things you can’t forget that History puts a saint in every dream.
TOM WAITS

Dreams Memories Remember Train Yourself
Most of the things you absorb you will ultimately secrete.
TOM WAITS

Absorb Willing Yourself
The earth is not my home, I’m just passing by.
TOM WAITS

Earth Home Myself Philosophy Travel Wisdom
I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
TOM WAITS

Freedom Myself Science
I never told the truth so i can never tell a lie.
TOM WAITS

Lying Myself Talk Truth
Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don’t get out much. It’s true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.
TOM WAITS

Admire Death Feeling People
Most people don’t care if you’re telling them the truth or if you’re telling them a lie, as long as they’re entertained by it.
TOM WAITS

Care Entertainment Lying People Truth Yourself
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.
TOM WAITS

Bad Difficult Myself Work
The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
TOM WAITS

Action Style Way Yourself

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Tom Waits Quotes