Tom Waits Quotes - Page 9

I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own.

Any image I have, it's just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you're a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties.

Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.

I never looked at music as a serious ven­ture. There was very little encouragement from my family. I didn't have anybody to entertain, so it was hard to get motivated.

It's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace, and a wound that will never heal. No prima donna, the perfume is on an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey. Goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers and goodnight, Matilda, too.

I was a fireman. I lived in the fire sta­tion for about a year. The pay wasn't so good. It was kind of like being in the army, or what I imagine that would be like.

It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.

Presley's what I go by, why don't you change the station.

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?

You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.

Disneyland is Vegas for children.

George Bush is a fan of mine, he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him.

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.

Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own.

Well, they'll bark you down like carneys, sell you Christmas cards in June.

It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.

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.

In terms of black music - the only music that we can call our own, that was really born here - I don't think a lot has been done to chronicle the relations between American history and where black music fits in.

There's a lot of intelligence in the hands.When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.

Words are music, really.

Well it's hotter 'n blazes and all the long faces / there'll be no oasis for a dry local grazier

My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.

bringing up children was]like living with a bunch of drunks...you really have to be on your toes all the time.

The moon was sharp enough to draw blood from a stone

I don't really like listening to the radio so much.