Tom Waits Quotes

When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure. ~ Tom Waits

Got 27 children I never see. ~ Tom Waits

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

Cross my wooden leg, swear on my glass eye. ~ Tom Waits

I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter. ~ Tom Waits

Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On ~ Tom Waits

I admit that I ain't no angel, I admit that I ain't no saint
I'm selfish and I'm cruel and I'm blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave they're so hard to find ... ~ Tom Waits

I don't know what the 'big time' is. ~ Tom Waits

It seems a stray bullet actually pierced the testicle of a Union soldier and lodged itself in the ovaries of a woman standing approximately 100 ft. away. She's alright, the baby's doing fine ... ofcourse the soldier's a little pissed off ... ~ Tom Waits

Don't plant your days they turn into weeds ~ Tom Waits

I took a hundred dollars from a blindman's hand. ~ Tom Waits

Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now. ~ Tom Waits

I like writing melody without an instrument. It's just so - it's more like the choreography of a bee; you just go. ~ Tom Waits

The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. ~ Tom Waits

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

People make songs so that somebody else will hear them and want to do them. I guess it's an indication that the songs aren't so ultra-personal that they can't possibly be interpreted by anyone else. ~ Tom Waits

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

If I want a sound, I usually feel better if I've chased it and killed it, skinned it and cooked it. Most things you can get with a button nowadays. So if I was trying for a certain drum sound, my engineer would say: "Oh, for Christ's sake, why are we wasting our time? Let's just hit this little cup with a stick here, sample something (take a drum sound from another record) and make it bigger in the mix, don't worry about it." I'd say, "No, I would rather go in the bathroom and hit the door with a piece of two-by-four very hard. ~ Tom Waits

You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her. ~ Tom Waits

Planes and Trains and Boats and Busses Characteristically Evolve a common attitude of blue Unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport And the cargo that they're carrying is you. ~ Tom Waits

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

There's no prayer like desire. ~ Tom Waits

I don't like hearing Beatles songs in commercials. It almost renders them useless. I think, 'Oh God, another one bites the dust.' ~ Tom Waits

The higher that the monkey can climb, the more he shows his tail.
Call no man happy till he dies, there's
no milk at the bottom of the pail.
God builds a church and the devil builds a chapel, like the thistles that are growing 'round the trunk of a tree.
All the good in the world you could put inside a thimble, and still have room for you and me.
If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.
You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but it always coming roaring back again.
Misery's the river of the world, misery's the river of the world.
Everybody row, everybody row;
misery's the river of the world. ~ Tom Waits

the earth is not my home, I'm just passing by ~ Tom Waits

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. ~ Tom Waits

Come down off the cross, we could use the wood. ~ Tom Waits

If you can make a little painting for the ears with a few words, well, I like words: I like cutting them up and finding different ways of saying the same thing. I get into a spell, and it all comes easy. I don't labor over it. I go inside the song. I think you make yourself an antenna for songs, and songs want to be around you. And then they bring other songs along, and then they're all sittin' around, and they're drinking your beer, and they're sleeping on the floor. And they are using the phone. They're rude, thankless little f-ers. ~ Tom Waits

Somebody said I sound like an old lady, and I was really insulted by that. I'm trying to sound like Skip James and Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. ~ Tom Waits

It's cold out there, colder than a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar Theatre on a Saturday night. ~ Tom Waits

If Bruce Springsteen, Harlan Howard, or Tom Waits can tell a character's whole story in four minutes, maybe you don't need as many words as you think to make an impact. ~ Tim Leffel

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

Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs. ~ Tom Waits

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day.
I told them this story:
In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me ... I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you ... you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day. ~ Tom Waits

I've made a profound transformation. I've fashioned some cyber-underwear. I'm not scared of anything! Actually, I am scared of a few things. Cyber world is a world of adventure, a new galaxy. I'm big on adventure. But I don't assume that just because the word cyber is being used as a prefix, doesn't give it anymore value or credence. Cyber relationships have the illusion of intimacy, sometimes with the absence of intimacy. Is it better to have a conversation in a café or on the telephone? ~ Tom Waits

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

Disneyland is Vegas for children. ~ Tom Waits

If you're a writer, you know that the stories don't come to you - you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were. ~ Tom Waits

Like one of his heroes, Tom Waits, whenever Yorke feels like his songwriting is getting too comfortable or stale, he'll pick up an instrument he doesn't know how to play and try to write with it. This is yet another trait of amateurs - they'll use whatever tools they can get their hands on to try to get their ideas into the world. "I'm an artist, man," said John Lennon. "Give me a tuba, and I'll get you something out of it. ~ Austin Kleon

I've been riding on the crest of a slump lately. ~ Tom Waits

There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk. ~ Tom Waits

Well you say that it's gospel, But I know that it's only church. ~ Tom Waits

The things you absorb you will ultimately secrete. It's all out there and available for you to enjoy ... and be nourished by. ~ Tom Waits

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. ~ Tom Waits

It's hard to win when you always lose. ~ Tom Waits

Most changes in music, most exciting things that happen in music, occur through a miscommunication between people "I thought you said this." Poetry comes out of that too. ~ Tom Waits

I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture. ~ Tom Waits

I'm not one of those people the tabloids chase around. ~ Tom Waits

I would love to work with Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, B.B. King. I'd love to do something with Arctic Monkeys, Miles Kane, and The Last Shadow Puppets. If I got a call from Juliette Lewis or PJ Harvey, or Chrissie Hynde, that'd be a thrill. ~ Imelda May

When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that. ~ Tom Waits

You don't meet nice girls in coffee shops. ~ Tom Waits

Well, they'll bark you down like carneys, sell you Christmas cards in June. ~ Tom Waits

If you get far enough away you'll be on your way back home. ~ Tom Waits

Presley's what I go by, why don't you change the station. ~ Tom Waits

Leonard Cohen can give you "Leonard Cohen" - the self-deprecating wit, the slow, considered speech, the perfectly-honed anecdote - Tom Waits is far more comfortable giving a journalist "Tom Waits" the character, whose conversation is really a series of strange tales, learned or ad-libbed. ~ Sylvie Simmons

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

Bill Hicks - blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built. ~ Tom Waits

They have removed the struggle to find anything. And therefore there is no genuine sense of discovery. Struggle is the first thing we know getting along the birth canal, out in the world. It's pretty basic. Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you'd go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that's gone. ~ Tom Waits

What you want is for music to love you back. That's why you pay your dues. You want to feel like you belong and are part of this symbiosis, metamorphosis, whatever you want to call it. ~ Tom Waits

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox. ~ Tom Waits

I worry about a lot of things, but I don't worry about achievements. I worry primarily about whether there are nightclubs in Heaven. ~ Tom Waits

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

An all time favorite: The large print giveth, the small print taketh away. ~ Tom Waits

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. ~ Tom Waits

You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it. ~ Tom Waits

You got to tell me the brave captain
Why are the wicked so strong?
How do the angels get to sleep
When the devil leaves the porch light on? ~ Tom Waits

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. ~ Tom Waits

And they all pretend they're Orphans
And 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

Well, it's either kiss me or kill me, that's how I see it. ~ Tom Waits

If you walk with Jesus, he's gonna save your soul. You gotta keep the devil way down in the hole. He's got the fire and the fury at his command. ~ Tom Waits

I was born in the back seat of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone and with the meter still running. I emerged needing a shave and shouted 'Time Square, and step on it!' ~ Tom Waits

Ah, man, if I could ever hook up with Tom Waits, I'd be the happiest camper in Yellowstone, alright? That's the one guy. ~ Al Jourgensen

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

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

I don't like listening to records a lot after they're done. There's just no real nourishment there for me. ~ Tom Waits

The big print giveth and the small print taketh away. ~ Tom Waits

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

The beginning of it starts at the end ~ Tom Waits

I don't really like listening to the radio so much. ~ Tom Waits

I don't go to church on Sunday, don't get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way ~ Tom Waits

Photos are profound because they have such short lives. They are more like fingerprints, dead leaves, rain puddles, or the corpses of flies. ~ Tom Waits

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. ~ Tom Waits

There's a certain fast-food approach to the whole music thing that's changed the role it plays for us all. You are doing it while you are doing other things. Not that that is new - people have had music on in the background as long as there has been music. ~ Tom Waits

In my bachelor days, I had a small upright piano in my kitchen. It cost £10 from eBay plus £70 delivery. It was because I'd seen an old photo of Tom Waits - with dirty dishes, empty bottles, a hot plate, a coffee machine and a piano strewn with lyric sheets - and fallen in love with it. ~ Jamie Cullum

Living with kids is like living with a bunch of drunks. You know you really have to be on your toes all the time. Things are falling over and breaking and spilling. If you live on the second story, you really have to keep the windows shut all the time. ~ Tom Waits

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 (to me, about 1986 or so) ~ Tom Waits

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

I like men who are very cool but who are also so brilliant that they are almost insane. Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits - men who would be flipping burgers if they hadn't found an outlet for their brilliant mind-sets. ~ Jolene Blalock

Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder. ~ Tom Waits

Q: What's hard for you?
A: 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. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German. ~ Tom Waits

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

I always thought songs are movies for the ears and films are like songs for the eyes. ~ Tom Waits

I've lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride. ~ Tom Waits

I think some bands thrive on the idea of changing instruments. When they're off their real instrument, the ability to go very far from the original idea is reduced. ~ Tom Waits

I'll tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past ... ~ Tom Waits

i never told the truth so i can never tell a lie... ~ Tom Waits

hell is boiling over. And heaven is full. We're chained to the world. And we all gotta pull. And we're all gonna be ...just dirt in the ground". ~ Tom Waits

I gaze out at the glittering sea, the breathtaking sky above it, and think of birds and the moment before the fall, and how my sister as a child had been strong enough for the both of us, and I wonder when exactly that changed. I don't know when, but it did. Jake was right - I'm strong in a way June never was. Because I know that I want to be here. Even with the pain. Even with the ugliness. I've seen the other side - marching side by side down city streets with people who all believe they can change the world and the view of the sunset from Fridgehenge and Tom Waits lyrics and doing the waltz and kisses so hot they melt into each other and best friends who hold your hand and stretching out underneath a sky draped with stars and everything else.
There is so much beauty in just existing. In being alive. I don't want to miss a second. ~ Hannah Harrington

When the weather's rough and it's whiskey in the rain it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane. ~ Tom Waits

They called it the Terminal Bar but they had no idea that like twenty years later the place'd be filling up with terminal cases. ~ Tom Waits