Tom Waits Quotes

it ain't no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones

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.

We have a deficit of wonder right now.

The devil knows the Bible like the back of his hand...

I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch

I was always laughing in church.

I may be drunk but at least I'm not insane.

A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.

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

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

Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs.

The Music was like Electric Sugar

You want soldiers who, when they get to a river after a long march, don't start rooting for their canteen in their pack, but just dive right in.

Cross my wooden leg, swear on my glass eye.

The Universe is making music all the time.

When you're 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.

The beginning of it starts at the end

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

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

I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong - I have audio illusions.

Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking the residue of all that material you absorbed over time.

Now it's closing time/the music's fading out.

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.

She pulls a razor from her boot and a thousand victims fall around her feet.

We are buried beneath the weight of information.

I think I have an adrenaline addiction, no question about that.

My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.

Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop.

George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.

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

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

There's no prayer like desire.

I don't like the stigma that comes with being called a poet . . . So I call what I'm doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.

Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead

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

New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.

I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train.

Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell 'em to do that, they'll find a little pot of gold.

I don't know if any genuine meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.

I took a hundred dollars from a blindman's hand.

I like writing melody without an instrument. It's just so - it's more like the choreography of a bee; you just go.

I finally discovered that my life is more important than show business.

I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page.

God's away, God's away, God's away on business. Business!

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

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

I never told the truth so i can never tell a lie.

People get frightened that success is going to take them out of life. They're no longer going to be on the corner of Bedlam and Squalor; life will only be something you can get through the mail.

The dog won't bite if you beat Him with a bone

If you walk with Jesus, he's gonna save your soul. You gotta keep the devil way down in the hole. He's got the fire and the fury at his command.