Quote

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

Tom Waits

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Tom Waits
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: December 7
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Jazz Guitarist
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
Pomona
California
Thomas Alan Waits
America
Liked
Facade
Ideas
Across
Wrapping
Always
Lies
Shiny
Tears
Crawling
Looking
Hood
Lying
Insects
Bigs
Tear
Cadillac
Idea
Beneath
Cadillacs

More quotes by Tom Waits

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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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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.
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And the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming.
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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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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.
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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.
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Disneyland is Vegas for children.
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Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning.
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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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George Bush is a fan of mine, he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him.
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I hope I'm becoming more eccentric. More room in the brain.
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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.
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The Music was like Electric Sugar
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They called it the Terminal Bar but they had no idea that like twenty years later the place'd be filling up with terminal cases.
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All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes
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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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I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else.
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Every single song has its own individual character and you can't treat each song the same way, because it wants to be treated differently and there are songs that are like scared birds that you have to sneak up on over the course of months in the woods.
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Anton brings the camera. I'll bring a tuba, wear black, not shave, and take us to a burned-down Chinese restaurant. (On being photographed by his longtime photo collaborator Anton Corbijn)
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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
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