black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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 don’t think that you should be perfectly candid and frank about the intimate details of your personal life with the public at large. Subsequently, it creates considerable personal problems.
TOM WAITS

Detail Intimate Myself Perfection Problem Thinking
The devil knows the Bible like the back of his hand.
TOM WAITS

Bible Devil Hands Himself Religious
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
TOM WAITS

Bad Destroy Hell Ourselves Place Suffering World Writing
You have to keep busy. After all, no dog’s ever pissed on a moving car.
TOM WAITS

Busy Car Dog Move Yourself
Never have your wallet with you onstage. It’s bad luck. You shouldn’t play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.
TOM WAITS

Inspirational Money Musician Need Play Stage Wallet Yourself
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 WAITS

Culture Known Music Myself Planet Topic
Most of the things you absorb you will ultimately secrete.
TOM WAITS

Absorb Willing Yourself
But it’s so hard to dance that way when it’s cold and there’s no music.
TOM WAITS

Cold Dance Hard Music Way
I’m just trying to make a buck like everyone else.
TOM WAITS

Money Myself
It’s rather mystifying when you think about writing songs – where they come from, and how they’re born.
TOM WAITS

Born Mysterious Thinking Writing Yourself
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

Alive Hands Ideas Music Time Yourself
The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change.
TOM WAITS

Average Change Life Person Time Traffic
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
There’s no prayer like desire.
TOM WAITS

Desire One Liner Prayer
Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.
TOM WAITS

Dreams Instagram Captions One Liner Rainbow Sing Steal
You’re innocent when you dream.
TOM WAITS

Dreams Innocence Yourself
If you get far enough away you’ll be on your way back home.
TOM WAITS

Enough Far Home Yourself
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 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
Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
TOM WAITS

Funny Instrument Musician Myself
There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
TOM WAITS

Advice Deep Food Freedom Trap
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
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
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
The beginning of it starts at the end.
TOM WAITS

Beginning End Start
I guess I’ve always lived upside down when I want things I can’t have.
TOM WAITS

Live Myself
I can’t listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You’re just processing too much, there’s no place to put it. If you go a long time without hearing music, then you hear music that nobody else hears.
TOM WAITS

Listening Music Mysekf Place Procession Time

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Tom Waits Quotes