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

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
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More quotes by Tom Waits

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If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound.
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You cannot really be too concerned with what people think of you. You're on your own adventure of growth and discovery. So it's not always good to be who people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well ... which is easily done, because then you don't have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else.
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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.
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I hope I'm becoming more eccentric. More room in the brain.
Tom Waits
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I like Thelonious Monk, he's so gnarled, he's like a piece of machinery that's pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own.
Tom Waits
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There's a lot of intelligence in the hands.When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.
Tom Waits
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That for me is more important than anything when you're in the studio - to have somebody you can trust and who knows you, knows who you are and doesn't let you get away with anything.
Tom Waits
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You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.
Tom Waits
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You're innocent when you dream.
Tom Waits
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It's hard to win when you always lose.
Tom Waits
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Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder.
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I was always laughing in church.
Tom Waits
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God's away, God's away, God's away on business. Business!
Tom Waits
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He said, I'm better off without her, until I showed him my tattoo.
Tom Waits
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I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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You have to keep busy. After all, no dog's ever pissed on a moving car.
Tom Waits
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I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.
Tom Waits
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Jesus Christ, this godamn rain, will someone put me on a train.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits