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You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you.

Tom Waits

I like Thelonious Monk, he’s so gnarled, he’s like a piece of machinery that’s pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own.
TOM WAITS

Floor Machine Myself Pieces
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 a beauty of show business. It’s the only business you can have a career in when you’re dead.
TOM WAITS

Beautiful Business Career Death Show Yourself
There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
TOM WAITS

Advice Deep Food Freedom Trap
I’ve lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.
TOM WAITS

Balance Car Myself Pride
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 made a wish on a sliver of moonlight A sly grin and a bowl full of stars.
TOM WAITS

Bowl Moon Myself Stars
We have a deficit of wonder right now.
TOM WAITS

Imagination Right Wonder
You know, we just buy music now. We don’t make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think it’s so important that people develop and subscribe to and have confidence in their own ability to make music, however rough it is.
TOM WAITS

Ability Confidence Important Music Rough Thinking Yourself
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
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
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’ve seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train.
TOM WAITS

Evening Myself Train
I’m the type of guy who’d sell you a rat’s asshole for a wedding ring.
TOM WAITS

Guy Ring Sell Type
The fact is most of the things that people know about me are made up. My own life is backstage. So what you “know” about me is only what I allowed you to know about me.
TOM WAITS

Allow Fact Myself People Rumor Yourself
The earth is not my home, I’m just passing by.
TOM WAITS

Earth Home Myself Philosophy Travel Wisdom
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

Abundance Beneath Bury Confusion Gun Happiness Information Knowledge Money Weapon Weight
I don’t like the stigma that comes with being called a poet. So I call what I’m doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.
TOM WAITS

Adventure Call Improvisation Myself Poet
If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man.
TOM WAITS

Cruelty Kind Man Oneself
I never told the truth so i can never tell a lie.
TOM WAITS

Lying Myself Talk Truth
I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
TOM WAITS

Music Myself Song Wind
Well you say that it’s gospel, But I know that it’s only church.
TOM WAITS

Gospel Myself Religious Yourself
The piano has been drinking, not me.
TOM WAITS

Drink Funny Instrument Myself Piano
Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.
TOM WAITS

Friendship Pain Reality
I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.
TOM WAITS

Hate Myself Prime
Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.
TOM WAITS

Dreams Instagram Captions One Liner Rainbow Sing Steal
New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.
TOM WAITS

End Force Surreal Yourself

You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you.

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You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you.

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Popular Authors

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