A Quote by Tom Waits

Some day I'm gonna be gone and people will be listening to my songs and conjuring me up. In order for that to happen, you gotta put something of yourself in it. — © Tom Waits
Some day I'm gonna be gone and people will be listening to my songs and conjuring me up. In order for that to happen, you gotta put something of yourself in it.
We need a plague. It's gotta happen. And don't worry, it's only gonna kill the weak. Seriously. Put on a sweater, take some vitamins, you're gonna be fine! We gotta let mother nature do her thing, man. She keeps trying to help us out and we won't let her do it.
I look at other people's tats for probably the idea, or like, where to put it or something. But, at the end of the day, all my tats gotta mean something back to me. The moment you get something that don't mean something to you, you're gonna regret that tattoo.
If you're gonna get punched in the face, elbowed, cut up, busted up, injured, have to cut weight, have to bring yourself to the brink of death to show up the next day and try to put on the performance of your life, you've gotta love it. And if I don't love it, it's just not worth it to me.
You're gonna be your best salesman. If you don't sell yourself, nobody else is gonna have a better time with it than you. You've gotta get up for it, every day.
Doin' music, musicians and artists, we have the advantage of doin' something that is our passion. At the same time it's fun, and it's like a dream to other people, and live off it, feed yourself off of it. 'Cause it's hard, you know what I"m sayin'? You really gotta grind and you really gotta love and enjoy what you do, if you're gonna make it. 'Cause if you don't believe in yourself, if you don't got people believin' in you, people aren't gonna buy it.
Every day I wake up like, "This might be my last day, and I'm not scared of it. I'm gonna go out there, do what I gotta do; I ain't gonna let nothing stop me." Nothing puts any fear in my heart. I'm never scared to bite my tongue about something, or never be scared to come out and speak about something - that's what I mean. Like, I ain't scared of death. What you gonna do to me?
Inspiration and creativity, they ride right next to one anotherNot everyday are you going to wake up, the clouds are gonna part and the rays are gonna come downsometimes you gotta just get in there and force yourself to work and maybe something good will come out of it.
In chess, you gotta come up with a strategy. I made a lot of plans in my life. 'I'ma do this, I'ma do that, this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen.' And a lot of stuff don't go as planned. You really gotta act on events as they unfold. That's how I compare chess to life.
I started writing songs so late and I had so many day jobs - jobs just to pay the bills. So, when I started doing this, I said, "I'm never gonna do anything to corrupt this. Never try to "sell it." Never gonna do anything to make this a job." I can go five months without writing a song. Then something will happen and I'll write six songs in a week.
People aren't just listening to my single, but they are listening to the whole album - and that's really encouraging to me because you just never know what's going to happen when you put something out.
My career doesn't get harder because when you have something to share, you have something to share. And when it's a trial or a situation that you triumph out of, you have to - because this is the relationship I started with my fans on the My Life album in 1994. You have to share in order for people to see how you came through it, or how you're dealing with having thoughts of doubting yourself. What songs are gonna help you? What lyrics are gonna pull you out of your slump?
Black people ALL are fightin' you all for freedom, justice and equality. One believes that intermarriage is gonna solve it, and 200 years from now we all will be a beautiful cream color. He really believes it. One believe that gittin' some rifles and shootin' up the country is gonna solve it, another believes that education. One day we'll be the president. One believe that we gotta git into the white man's pockets and get all the money.
We didn't say, 'Hey, we're gonna pick a bunch of cover songs,' or, 'We're gonna write an original song that has to sound like this, because we're a metal band, so we're gonna cover some metal songs.' We did the opposite. We just said, 'We're gonna have fun with these songs, and we're gonna try different things.'
Me and Thugger could make nine songs in a day and then choose which songs we like the most and think is gonna do something. With other people, it's like, we pick one song, and we hope it's the one.
Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.
You can't just say, "I'm gonna have style." You have to work at it. It's intuitive; some people have it, and some people can work on it all day long, and it will never happen.
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