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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: 75
Born: 1949
Born: December 7
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Jazz Guitarist
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
Pomona
California
Thomas Alan Waits
Upside
Guess
Lived
Always
Things
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More quotes by Tom Waits

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I did my time in the jail of your arms
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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Now its raining its pouring the old man is snoring now I lay me down to sleep I hear the sirens in the street all my dreams are made of chrome I have no way to get back home I’d rather die before I wake like Marilyn Monroe and throw my dreams out in the street and the rain make ‘em grow
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I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
Tom Waits
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But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.
Tom Waits
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I saw a crow building a nest, I was watching him very carefully, I was kind of stalking him and he was aware of it. And you know what they do when they become aware of someone stalking them when they build a nest, which is a very vulnerable place to be? They build a decoy nest. It's just for you.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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You've gotta have somebody to trust, that knows a lot.
Tom Waits
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I think some bands thrive on the idea of changing instruments. When they're off their real instrument, the ability to go very far from the original idea is reduced.
Tom Waits
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I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture.
Tom Waits
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Unfortunately, I made the mistake at one point of putting my address on the back of one of my albums, just to find out what would happen. I received a lot of disturbing mail and calls. Actually, I was living in a hotel, so it was easy enough to find the number. I got a kick out of it for a while. Then I realized what I'd done.
Tom Waits
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and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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I took a hundred dollars from a blindman's hand.
Tom Waits
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I was born in the back seat of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone and with the meter still running. I emerged needing a shave and shouted 'Time Square, and step on it!'
Tom Waits
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All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes
Tom Waits
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When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that.
Tom Waits
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For a songwriter, you dont really go to songwriting school you learn by listening to tunes.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits