Tom Waits Quotes

Anton brings the camera. I'll bring a tuba, wear black, not shave, and take us to a burned-down Chinese restaurant. (On being photographed by his longtime photo collaborator Anton Corbijn)

You choke my days, I'll choke yours.

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

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

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

When you say you're doing an opera, it's like when you're a seven-year-old and say, 'I'm off to Washington, Dad.' You kind of go, 'Sure. Sure you are, son.'

I'm reliable sources, I'll tell ya anything you want me to know.

Misery is the River of the World

Francis Ford Coppola is completely unconventional. He has a strong sense of loyalty. Great eyes. It's a diabolical undertaking in terms of organization and leadership.

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

You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.

As a kid, I did want to be an old-timer, since they were the ones with the big stories and the cool clothes. I wanted to go there. Now, I guess I want to bring that with me and go back in time.

Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?

Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah,I drunk me a river since you tore me apart

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.

You can drive out nature with a pitch fork But it always comes roaring back again.

but it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music.

That for me is more important than anything when you're in the studio - to have somebody you can trust and who knows you, knows who you are and doesn't let you get away with anything.

It's hard to win when you always lose.

There's truths there that spiral out of what appears to be just a word game. That's what I find mystifying about the meanings of things: they kind of unscrew themselves from the practical words.

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.

There's a place down the street; Seven Xs. What does that mean? Maybe it's... girls without skin.

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

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.

I was a fireman. I lived in the fire sta­tion for about a year. The pay wasn't so good. It was kind of like being in the army, or what I imagine that would be like.

Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?

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.

Words are music, really.

Well it's hotter 'n blazes and all the long faces / there'll be no oasis for a dry local grazier

bringing up children was]like living with a bunch of drunks...you really have to be on your toes all the time.

I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.

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

The moon was sharp enough to draw blood from a stone

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

If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound.

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

I’ve never met anyone who made it with a chick because they owned a Tom Waits album. I’ve got all three, and it’s never helped me.

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

I danced along a colored wind/ Dangled from a rope of sand

using parking meters as walking sticks.

I know a girl, she been married so many times, she got rice marks all over her face

My friends think I'm ugly, I gotta masculine face.

I never looked at music as a serious ven­ture. There was very little encouragement from my family. I didn't have anybody to entertain, so it was hard to get motivated.

It wasn't good for my nerves, that kind of work - a fireman. I've got high blood pressure. I get upset easily. I don't think that was a proper career alternative for me.

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.

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

Jesus Christ, this godamn rain, will someone put me on a train.

If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal.

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.

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.