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: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 7
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Jazz Guitarist
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
Pomona
California
Thomas Alan Waits
Take
Squalor
Going
Mail
Something
Frightened
Life
Corner
People
Corners
Longer
Success
Art
Bedlam

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Misery is the River of the World
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There's truths there that spiral out of what appears to be just a word game. That's what I find mystifying about the meanings of things: they kind of unscrew themselves from the practical words.
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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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You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.
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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 guess I've always lived upside down when I want things I can't have.
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Most changes in music, most exciting things that happen in music, occur through a miscommunication between people I thought you said this. Poetry comes out of that too.
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Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it they'll just make another one.
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Every single song has its own individual character and you can't treat each song the same way, because it wants to be treated differently and there are songs that are like scared birds that you have to sneak up on over the course of months in the woods.
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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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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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Francis Ford Coppola is completely unconventional. He has a strong sense of loyalty. Great eyes. It's a diabolical undertaking in terms of organization and leadership.
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It wasn't good for my nerves, that kind of work - a fireman. I've got high blood pressure. I get upset easily. I don't think that was a proper career alternative for me.
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There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
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The dog won't bite if you beat Him with a bone
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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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Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothing.
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And the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming.
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If you're a writer you know that the stories don't come to you, you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were.
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The piano has been drinking, not me.
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