A Quote by 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
Photos are profound because they have such short lives. They are more like fingerprints, dead leaves, rain puddles, or the corpses of flies.
Everything is mediated. Everything is influenced by its maker. And happily, right? I'm so happy everyone leaves fingerprints on things whether they like it or not. Fingerprints solve crimes. They're profound. They're your best and worst friend and you were born with them and you can't get away from them without a lot of pain and sandpaper.
Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head.
People around me die. They drop like flies. I've gone through life leaving a trail of dead bodies behind me. My mother is dead, my guardian is dead, my aunt is dead—because I killed her, and when my real father finds me, he'll move heaven and earth to make me dead.
Cartoons are like fruit flies. Biologists use fruit flies because their large chromosomes and short life cycle make them ideal for studying hereditary changes.
I decide I'm not dead because I can hear the sound of the rain hitting the roof of the car. I'm alive because I'm listening to the rain, and the rain becomes the hand of God strumming his fingers on the roof, deciding what to do.
I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions... Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.
We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection, because we get rewarded in these short term signals: Hearts, likes, thumbs up. We conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth, and instead, what it really is is fake, brittle popularity that's short term and leaves you even more vacant and empty before you did it.
In the West the past is like a dead animal. It is a carcass picked at by the flies that call themselves historians and biographers. But in my culture the past lives. My people feel this way in part because death does not separate us from our ancestors.
Just a little rain falling all around The grass lifts its head to the heavenly sound Just a little rain, just a little rain What have they done to the rain? Just a little boy standing in the rain The gentle rain that falls for years And the grass is gone and the boy disappears And the rain keeps falling like helpless tears And what have they done to the rain? Just a little breeze out of the sky The leaves nod their heads as the breeze blows by Just a little breeze with some smoke in its eye And what have they done to the rain?
[My work] includes something about death, and about love, because the photos always have something to do with death. The photograph is like taxidermy. It is like the animals I use. They are posed in order to appear to be alive, but they are dead. Their time has passed. The photos have to do with time and loss, and conclusion.
But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.
After an age of leaves and feathers someone dead thought of the mountain as money and cut the trees that were here and the wind and the rain at night. It is hard to say it.
in the place I am from ... a grave is topped off with a huge mound of loose earth - carelessly, as if piled up in child's play, not serious at all - because death is just another way of being, and the dead will not stay put, and sometimes the actions of the dead are more significant, more profound, than their actions in life, and no structure of concrete or stone can contain them.
What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul.
The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.
Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter's core experience isn't about photos. It's a world of text, with occasional embedded photos, animated gifs, and short video clips.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!