"Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors keep'em open they're the ears of the town"
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Quote collection
Tom Waits quotes (page 14 of 15)
282 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"There's a place on my arm where I've written her name next to mine."
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"Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own."
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"and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades"
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"I walked 500 miles just to see a halo, when I opened my eyes I was blind as can be."
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"There's a certain fast-food approach to the whole music thing that's changed the role it plays for us all. You are doing it while you are doing other things. Not that that is new - people have had music on in the background as long as there has been music."
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"I've made a profound transformation. I've fashioned some cyber-underwear. I'm not scared of anything! Actually, I am scared of a few things. Cyber world is a world of adventure, a new galaxy. I'm big on adventure. But I don't assume that just because the word cyber is being used as a prefix, doesn't give it anymore value or credence. Cyber relationships have the illusion of intimacy, sometimes with the absence of intimacy. Is it better to have a conversation in a café or on the telephone?"
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"You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it."
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"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."
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"With families and music, you're usually looking for something that can make you unique."
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"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."
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"I'm trying to learn how to write faster."
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"You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone."
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"If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal."
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"He said, I'm better off without her, until I showed him my tattoo."
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"What you want is for music to love you back. That's why you pay your dues. You want to feel like you belong and are part of this symbiosis, metamorphosis, whatever you want to call it."
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"There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas."
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"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."
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"Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning."
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