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Misery is the River of the World

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
River
Rivers
Misery
World

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Now it's closing time/the music's fading out.
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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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If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it's good. I'm not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don't cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don't stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you'll never see it again.
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He said, I'm better off without her, until I showed him my tattoo.
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Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
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There's a place down the street Seven Xs. What does that mean? Maybe it's... girls without skin.
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Photos are profound because they have such short lives. They are more like fingerprints, dead leaves, rain puddles, or the corpses of flies.
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If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.
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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.
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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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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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I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.
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It was a hubba, hubba, ding dang, baby you are just everythang.
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I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong… I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.
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Well it's hotter 'n blazes and all the long faces / there'll be no oasis for a dry local grazier
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I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page.
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I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.
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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.
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I was always laughing in church.
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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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