Tom Waits Quotes

Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like 'Chicago' is a very musical sounding name.

Got 27 children I never see.

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

He said, I'm better off without her, until I showed him my tattoo.

It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.

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

Disneyland is Vegas for children.

There's a place on my arm where I've written her name next to mine.

I'm trying to learn how to write faster.

I really like your playing

With families and music, you're usually looking for something that can make you unique.

Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors keep'em open they're the ears of the town

Some men are searching for the Holy Grail, but there ain't nothing sweeter than riding the rail. Pregnant women and Vietnam vets, beggin on the freeway, bout as hard as it gets.

and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades

There's a lot of intelligence in the hands.When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.

I walked 500 miles just to see a halo, when I opened my eyes I was blind as can be.

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

It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning.

The blues and gospel stuff seemed to go together.

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

The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

And I remember quiet evenings trembling close to you...

I made a wish on a sliver of moonlightA sly grin and a bowl full of stars

You must have brought the bad weather with youThe sky's the color of leadAll you've left me is a featherOn an unmade bed

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.