Quote

People get frightened that success is going to take them out of life. They're no longer going to be on the corner of Bedlam and Squalor life will only be something you can get through the mail.

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
Longer
Success
Art
Bedlam
Take
Squalor
Going
Mail
Something
Frightened
Life
Corner
People
Corners

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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 think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.
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It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.
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You know what I really love? The CD players in a car. How when you put the CD right up by the slot, it actually takes it out of your hand, like it's hungry. It pulls it in, and you feel like it wants more silver discs.
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My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
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The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
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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.
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There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
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I was always laughing in church.
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You're my North Star when I'm lost and feeling blue.
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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!'
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George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.
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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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I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch
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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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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.
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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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I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.
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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.
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There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.
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