Top 303 Quotes & Sayings by Tom Waits - Page 2

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.

My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.

There's not much difference between what I appear to be on stage and what I am. I think people like that, that I'm not trying to pull a caper.

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

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.

I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own.

I look for things that are left of center, something you've only seen your whole life, but never heard. Hit it! With a stick! I have a guitar made out of a 2x4 that I bought in Cleveland.

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

The only thing worse than being in the Hall of Fame is not being in the Hall of Fame.

If you are making a record, you are the one saying 'action', and you are the one saying 'cut,' and you have to be sure that the most interesting thing is not going on outside the frame.

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.

People say all kinds of things about the ingredients of songs. But you know they are a kind of magic, in the sense that they may easily include a stain on your bedroom wall... and a variety of mis-recollections. And then you name it after a girl's name that you just made up.

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 have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong - I have audio illusions.

I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It's an early analog synthesizer; it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices - everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra.

I didn't really identify with the music of my own generation, but I was very curious about the music of others.

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.

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.

Time is just memory Mixed in with Desire.

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

I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.

I'm always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you're drowning, and it's there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music.

You have to keep busy. After all, no dog's ever pissed on a moving car.

It's very hard to stop doing things you're used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.

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

There's no prayer like desire.

I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.

When you're writing‚ you're conjuring. It's a ritual‚ and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room.

I'm interested in things when I don't know what they are. Like "Hey, Ray, what the hell is this?" Oh, that's lipstick from the 1700s, that's dog food from the turn of the century, that's a hat from World War II. I'm interested in the minutiae of things. Oddities.

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

All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes

You cannot really be too concerned with what people think of you. You're on your own adventure of growth and discovery. So it's not always good to be who people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well ... which is easily done, because then you don't have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else.

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.

There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.

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 nothing.

I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.

I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.

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

The way you do anything is the way you do everything.

Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.

Most of the things you absorb you will ultimately secrete.

Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.

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

I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.

If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.

I'm not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here.

All that you've loved is all you own

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

A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.

The folks who know the truth aren't talking.... The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!

Once upon a time there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. And they grew next to each other. And every day the straight tree would look at the crooked tree and he would say, "You're crooked. You've always been crooked and you'll continue to be crooked. But look at me! Look at me!" said the straight tree. He said, "I'm tall and I'm straight." And then one day the lumberjacks came into the forest and looked around, and the manager in charge said, "Cut all the straight trees." And that crooked tree is still there to this day, growing strong and growing strange.

Jimmy Stewart said he stopped making movies because he didn't like the way he looked on screen anymore. I'm more the guy who says I look like hell but I'm going to see where it gets me.

There's a beauty of show business. It's the only business you can have a career in when you're dead.

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

We are all just monkeys with money and guns.

Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air.

The trick is to have a career and have a family. It's like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.

We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.

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.

If I exorcise my devils, all my angels may go, too.