"A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't."
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Quote collection
Tom Waits quotes (page 1 of 15)
282 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"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."
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"I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy."
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"when your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans"
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"The folks who know the truth aren't talking.... The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!"
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"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things."
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"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."
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"You have to keep busy. After all, no dog's ever pissed on a moving car."
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"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."
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"When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure."
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"Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it."
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"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."
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"Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream."
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"I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in."
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"I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath."
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"If you get far enough away you'll be on your way back home."
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"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."
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"Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder."
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"I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there."
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