Quote

For a songwriter, you dont really go to songwriting school you learn by listening to tunes.

Tom Waits

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tom Waits
Age: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 7
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Jazz Guitarist
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
Pomona
California
Thomas Alan Waits
Really
Songwriter
Songwriters
Dont
Tunes
Listening
Learn
School

More quotes by Tom Waits

Image
Popular music is like a big party, and it’s a thrill sneaking in rather than being invited. Every once in a while, a guy with his shirt on inside out, wearing lipstick and a pillbox hat gets a chance to speak.
Tom Waits
Image
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)
Tom Waits
Image
My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
Tom Waits
Image
but it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
I was a fireman. I lived in the fire sta­tion for about a year. The pay wasn't so good. It was kind of like being in the army, or what I imagine that would be like.
Tom Waits
Image
You know, we just buy music now. We don't make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think it's so important that people develop and subscribe to and have confidence in their own ability to make music, however rough it is.
Tom Waits
Image
It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.
Tom Waits
Image
You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.
Tom Waits
Image
It's hard to win when you always lose.
Tom Waits
Image
Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
Tom Waits
Image
The dog won't bite if you beat Him with a bone
Tom Waits
Image
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
Image
They called it the Terminal Bar but they had no idea that like twenty years later the place'd be filling up with terminal cases.
Tom Waits
Image
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
Image
I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch
Tom Waits
Image
Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?
Tom Waits
Image
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
Tom Waits
Image
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
Tom Waits
Image
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