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 WAITSThey say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with. And they say that like it’s a bad thing.
More Tom Waits Quotes
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Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?
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I made a wish on a sliver of moonlight A sly grin and a bowl full of stars.
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I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
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Well, it’s either kiss me or kill me, that’s how I see it.
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New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.
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When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.
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All that you’ve loved is all you own.
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I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.
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Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.
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She’s got the whole dark forest living inside of her.
TOM WAITS