Quote

I guess I've always lived upside down when I want things I can't have.

Tom Waits

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Tom Waits
Age: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 7
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Jazz Guitarist
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
Pomona
California
Thomas Alan Waits
Lived
Always
Things
Timer
Upside
Guess

More quotes by Tom Waits

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I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music.
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I'm the type of guy who'd sell you a rat's asshole for a wedding ring.
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The things you absorb you will ultimately secrete. It's all out there and available for you to enjoy...and be nourished by.
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Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?
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Jesus Christ, this godamn rain, will someone put me on a train.
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Chevrolet was puzzled when they discovered that their sales for the Chevy Nova were off the charts everywhere but in Latin America. They finally realized that Nova in Spanish translates to no go. Not the best name for a car... anywhere no va.
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The piano has been drinking, not me.
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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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Most changes in music, most exciting things that happen in music, occur through a miscommunication between people I thought you said this. Poetry comes out of that too.
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He said, I'm better off without her, until I showed him my tattoo.
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Planes and Trains and Boats and Busses Characteristically Evolve a common attitude of blue Unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport And the cargo that they're carrying is you.
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She pulls a razor from her boot and a thousand victims fall around her feet.
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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.
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I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page.
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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.
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Misery is the River of the World
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Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.
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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.
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All medical procedures require two hands, so in a sense it's like when you play an instrument. That's what they call things that they use in their work: They call them instruments. A lot of people start out majoring in medicine and drop it and change their major to music.
Tom Waits
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The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable.
Tom Waits