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Misery is the River of the World

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
River
Rivers
Misery
World

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The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
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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.
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Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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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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My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.
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You've gotta have somebody to trust, that knows a lot.
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Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors keep'em open they're the ears of the town
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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.
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Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it.
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There's a beauty of show business. It's the only business you can have a career in when you're dead.
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I took a hundred dollars from a blindman's hand.
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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.
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Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.
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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 do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.
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When you say you're doing an opera, it's like when you're a seven-year-old and say, 'I'm off to Washington, Dad.' You kind of go, 'Sure. Sure you are, son.'
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