Tom Waits Quotes

when your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans

using parking meters as walking sticks.

I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong… I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.

For a songwriter, you dont really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes.

You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don't want to live any other way.

I'm so horny the crack of dawn better watch out.

I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else.

I may be drunk but at least I'm not insane.

Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.

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.

You know when you throw a party, you think people will show up and no one will like each other. It's like that with music - parts of your musical psyche have never met other parts. You wonder if you should get them together.

Your hands are like dogs, going to the same places they've been. You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places. You have to break them of their habits or you don't explore; you only play what is confident and pleasing. I'm learning to break those habits by playing instruments I know absolutely nothing about, like a bassoon or a waterphone.

I'll be clickin' by your house about two forty-five, Sidewalk Sundae Strawberry Surprise.

...and I'm standing on the corner of Fifth and Vermouth.

I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.

Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop.

Arithmetic arithmetock Turn the hands back on the clock How does the ocean rock the boat? How did the razor find my throat? The only strings that hold me here Are tangled up around the pier.

Music has generally involved a lot of awkward contraptions, a certain amount of heavy lifting.

I'm trying to learn how to write faster.

Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking the residue of all that material you absorbed over time.

On my gravestone, I want it to say, "I told you I was sick."

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.

I don't know what the 'big time' is.

If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it's good. I'm not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don't cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don't stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you'll never see it again.

I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.

The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change.

All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning.

If I want to walk out in the desert and heat up a can of beans on a fire, I still can. In those movies like Gattaca or whatever, the space age stuff is always all there is. But in the world there is never just one way of living. It's more like a big junkyard. Put it this way: I'm not afraid I'm going to end up on a space station in aluminium-foil underwear.

Leona Helmsley's dog made $12 million last year... and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000. It's just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains.

I don't know if any genuine meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.

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.

It's a battered old suitcase and a hotel someplace and a wound that will never heal.

I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music.

George Bush is a fan of mine, he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him.

I just don't like the word 'fun'--it's like Volkswagen, or bell-bottoms, or patchouli-oil or bean-sprouts...it rubs me up the wrong way.

New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.

The beginning of it starts at the end

Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own.

When it's raining you can't find enough things to catch it in. When it's not you can stand out in the middle of the street in a dress and a funny hat and nothing's gonna make it rain. I go through periods - or spells - when I'm more receptive.

Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.

This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. "Oh, it's just a couple little innocent bad days." Well, we had a big rain. I don't know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. 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 nothin'. They're your days. Choke 'em!

I never told the truth so i can never tell a lie.

I took a hundred dollars from a blindman's hand.

Got 27 children I never see.

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train.

In terms of black music - the only music that we can call our own, that was really born here - I don't think a lot has been done to chronicle the relations between American history and where black music fits in.

She's got the whole dark forest living inside of her.