Tom Waits Quotes

“I'm so goddamn horny, the crack of dawn better be careful around me!”

“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.”

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

“The beginning of it starts at the end”

“You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her.”

“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.”

“but it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music.”

“If you get far enough away you'll be on your way back home.”

“And sometime around 2 AM you end up taking advantage of yourself. Ain't no way around that. Making a scene with a magazine.”

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and elevate.”

“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.”

“when your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans”

“It's kind of like borrowing the same ten bucks from somebody over and over again.”

“Well I got a bad liver and broken heart,
yeah, I drunk me a river since you
tore me apart”

“Well, it's either kiss me or kill me, that's how I see it.”

“T’ain’t no sin to take off your skin, and dance around in your bones.”

“Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.”

“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.”

“and the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming…”

“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.”

“Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.”

“the earth is not my home, I'm just passing by”

“I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.”

“I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

“The piano has been drinking, not me.”

“All that you've loved is all you own”

“I've lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.”

“I've been riding on the crest of a slump lately.”

“And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can forget, that history puts a saint in every dream.”

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

“Time is just memory
Mixed in with Desire.”

“You got to tell me the brave captain
Why are the wicked so strong?
How do the angels get to sleep
When the devil leaves the porch light on?”

“We are all just monkeys with money and guns.”

“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 (to me, about 1986 or so)”

“Let me fall out of the window/
With confetti in my hair”

“The Universe is making music all the time.”

“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

“When the weather's rough and it's whiskey in the rain it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane.”

“Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.”

“I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train…”

“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 "Foreign Affairs”

“Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On”

“slept all night in the cedar grove,
i was born to ramble, born to rove,
some men are searchin' for the holy grail,
but there ain't nothin' sweeter
than ridin' the rails”

“Well you say that it's gospel,
But I know that it's only church.”

“I walked 500 miles just to see a halo, when I opened my eyes I was blind as can be.”

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

“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.”

“There's no prayer like desire.”

“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…”

“The Music was like Electric Sugar”

“It's the same with men as with horses and dogs, nothing wants to die.”

“Got a head full of lightning, a hat full of rain.”

“and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades”

“I worry about a lot of things, but I don’t worry about achievements. I worry primarily about whether there are nightclubs in Heaven.”

“I danced along a colored wind/
Dangled from a rope of sand”

“It's cold out there, colder than a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar Theatre on a Saturday night.”

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

“The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
There's leak, there's a leak, in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who ore the ones that we kept in
charge
Killers, thieves, and lawyers
God's Away, God's away
God's away on Business”

“Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.”

“The face forgives the mirror, the worm forgives the plough, the question begs the answer, can you forgive me somehow?”