Thomas Alan Waits is an American singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. Profoundly inspirational Tom Waits quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Tom Waits Quotes
I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left. Tom Waits
I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
There ain’t no devil, only God when he’s drunk. Tom Waits
You have to keep busy. After all, no dog’s ever pissed on a moving car. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t. Tom Waits
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
Well, it’s either kiss me or kill me, that’s how I see it. Tom Waits
The folks who know the truth aren’t talking. The ones who don’t have a clue, you can’t shut them up! Tom Waits
This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. Oh, it’s just a couple little innocent bad days. Well, we had a big rain. I don’t know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. 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 nothin. They’re your days. Choke em! Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
I don’t have a drinking problem Cept when I can’t get a drink. Tom Waits
There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. Tom Waits
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t. Tom Waits
I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things. Tom Waits
T’ain’t no sin to take off your skin, and dance around in your bones. Tom Waits
I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in. Tom Waits
Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends. Tom Waits
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. Tom Waits
You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don’t get out much. It’s true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well. Tom Waits
If you get far enough away you’ll be on your way back home. Tom Waits
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things. Tom Waits
You cannot really be too concerned with what people think of you. You’re on your own adventure of growth and discovery. So it’s not always good to be who people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well which is easily done, because then you don’t have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream. Tom Waits
I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas. Tom Waits
I always thought songs are movies for the ears and films are like songs for the eyes. Tom Waits
I don’t go to church on Sunday, don’t get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way. Tom Waits
Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air. Tom Waits
All that you’ve loved is all you own. Tom Waits
The way you do anything is the way you do everything. Tom Waits
And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget that history puts a saint in every dream. Tom Waits
I’m always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you’re drowning, and it’s there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music. Tom Waits
Oh I don’t mind going to weddings, just as long as it’s not my own. Tom Waits
Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just god when he’s drunk. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure. Tom Waits
They say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with. And they say that like it’s a bad thing. Tom Waits
All that you’ve loved is all you own. Tom Waits
We are all just monkeys with money and guns. Tom Waits
If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man. Tom Waits
Never have your wallet with you onstage. It’s bad luck. You shouldn’t play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money. Tom Waits
The trick is to have a career and have a family. It’s like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night. Tom Waits
The Universe is making music all the time. Tom Waits
I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy. Tom Waits
When the weather’s rough and it’s whiskey in the rain it’s best to wrap your savior up in cellophane. Tom Waits
I don’t have a drinking problem Cept when I can’t get a drink. Tom Waits
Most vagabonds i knowed don’t ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession’s in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest. Tom Waits
Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends. Tom Waits
I’ve never been a fan of personality conflict burgers and identity crisis omelets with patchouli oil. I function very well on a diet that consists of Chicken Catastrophe and Eggs Overwhelming and a tall, cool Janitor in a Drum. I like to walk out of a restaurant with enough gas to open a Mobil station. Tom Waits
I’m not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here. Tom Waits
Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don’t care if they lose it; they’ll just make another one. Tom Waits
Time is just memory Mixed in with Desire. Tom Waits
My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Tom Waits
If I exorcise my devils, all my angels may go, too. Tom Waits
I admit that I ain’t no angel, I admit that I ain’t no saint I’m selfish and I’m cruel and I’m blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave they’re so hard to find. Tom Waits
They have removed the struggle to find anything. And therefore there is no genuine sense of discovery. Struggle is the first thing we know getting along the birth canal, out in the world. It’s pretty basic. Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you’d go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that’s gone. Tom Waits
I worry about a lot of things, but I don’t worry about achievements. I worry primarily about whether there are nightclubs in Heaven. Tom Waits
Jimmy Stewart said he stopped making movies because he didn’t like the way he looked on screen anymore. I’m more the guy who says I look like hell but I’m going to see where it gets me. Tom Waits
Your old home town’s so far away, but inside your head there’s a record that’s playing, a song called Hold On. Tom Waits
Come down off the cross, we could use the wood. Tom Waits
I walked 500 miles just to see a halo, when I opened my eyes I was blind as can be. Tom Waits
Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers. Tom Waits
It’s the same with men as with horses and dogs, nothing wants to die. Tom Waits
I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there. Tom Waits
Got a head full of lightning, a hat full of rain. Tom Waits
There’s no prayer like desire. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
She’s got the whole dark forest living inside of her. Tom Waits
All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes. Tom Waits
There’s nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face. I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else’s. That’s a difficult statement to live up to, but then I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there. Tom Waits
I’ve lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride. Tom Waits
It’s cold out there, colder than a ticket taker’s smile at the Ivar Theatre on a Saturday night. Tom Waits
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. Tom Waits
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? Tom Waits
She’s got the whole dark forest living inside of her. Tom Waits
He likes a day in the studio to end, he says, when my knees are all skinned up and my pants are wet and my hair’s off to one side and I feel like I’ve been in the foxhole all day. I don’t think comfort is good for music. It’s good to come out with skinned knuckles after wrestling with something you can’t see. I like it when you come home at the end of the day from recording and someone says, What happened to your hand? And you don’t even know. When you’re in that place, you can dance on a broken ankle. Tom Waits
I never told the truth so I can never tell a lie. Tom Waits
Most of the things you absorb you will ultimately secrete. Tom Waits
The big print giveth and the small print taketh away. Tom Waits
When you are writing, you’re conjuring. It’s a ritual, and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you’re inviting into the room. Tom Waits
This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. Oh, it’s just a couple little innocent bad days. Well, we had a big rain. I don’t know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. 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 nothin. They’re your days. Choke em! Tom Waits
There ain’t no devil there’s just god when he’s drunk. Tom Waits
We are all just monkeys with money and guns. Tom Waits
On my gravestone, I want it to say, I told you I was sick. Tom Waits
You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you. Tom Waits
And I remember quiet evenings trembling close to you. Tom Waits
On my gravestone, I want it to say, I told you I was sick. Tom Waits
I’m so goddamn horny, the crack of dawn better be careful around me! Tom Waits
Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don’t get out much. It’s true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well. Tom Waits
I’m not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here. Tom Waits
She’s a shiksa goddess and a trapeze artist, all of that. She can fix the truck she’s outta this world she’s bold, inventive and fearless. That’s who you wanna go in the woods with, right? Somebody who finishes your sentences for you. Tom Waits
I’ve never met anyone who made it with a chick because they owned a Tom Waits album. I’ve got all three, and it’s never helped me. Tom Waits
Oh, I’m not a percussionist, I just like to hit things. Tom Waits
Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers. Tom Waits
We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Tom Waits
You got to tell me brave captain, why are the wicked so strong, how do the angels get to sleep, when the devil leaves the porchlight on. Tom Waits
Don’t look back, because someone might be gaining on you. Tom Waits
God’s away, God’s away, God’s away on business. Business! Tom Waits
There’s a beauty of show business. It’s the only business you can have a career in when you’re dead. Tom Waits
I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites. Tom Waits
Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don’t care if they lose it; they’ll just make another one. Tom Waits
