"I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm."
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Quote collection
Tom Waits quotes (page 4 of 15)
282 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"For a songwriter, you dont really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes."
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"I put food on the table and roof overhead. But I'd trade it all tomorrow for the highway instead."
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"There's a beauty of show business. It's the only business you can have a career in when you're dead."
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"It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born."
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"I just don't like the word 'fun'--it's like Volkswagen, or bell-bottoms, or patchouli-oil or bean-sprouts...it rubs me up the wrong way."
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"But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music."
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"The sight of the first woman in the minimal two-piece was as explosive as the detonation of the atomic bomb by the U.S. at Bikini Island in the Marshall Isles, hence the naming of the bikini."
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"There's nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you're not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I'm the worst. I'm the worst at that."
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"Don't plant your days they turn into weeds"
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"I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas."
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"I’ve always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it’s amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something."
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"For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too."
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"Living with kids is like living with a bunch of drunks. You know you really have to be on your toes all the time. Things are falling over and breaking and spilling. If you live on the second story, you really have to keep the windows shut all the time."
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"Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at."
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"If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it's good. I'm not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don't cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don't stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you'll never see it again."
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"I guess I've always lived upside down when I want things I can't have."
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"Leona Helmsley's dog made $12 million last year... and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000. It's just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains."
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"Your hands are like dogs, going to the same places they've been. You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places. You have to break them of their habits or you don't explore; you only play what is confident and pleasing. I'm learning to break those habits by playing instruments I know absolutely nothing about, like a bassoon or a waterphone."
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"There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby."
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