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I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.

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
Injury
Arms
Take
Rusty
Nail
Scratch
Initials
Scratches
Nails

More quotes by Tom Waits

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Unfortunately, I made the mistake at one point of putting my address on the back of one of my albums, just to find out what would happen. I received a lot of disturbing mail and calls. Actually, I was living in a hotel, so it was easy enough to find the number. I got a kick out of it for a while. Then I realized what I'd done.
Tom Waits
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It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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When it's raining you can't find enough things to catch it in. When it's not you can stand out in the middle of the street in a dress and a funny hat and nothing's gonna make it rain. I go through periods - or spells - when I'm more receptive.
Tom Waits
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There's a place down the street Seven Xs. What does that mean? Maybe it's... girls without skin.
Tom Waits
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There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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Misery is the River of the World
Tom Waits
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Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.
Tom Waits
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I just don't like the word 'fun'--it's like Volkswagen, or bell-bottoms, or patchouli-oil or bean-sprouts...it rubs me up the wrong way.
Tom Waits
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She pulls a razor from her boot and a thousand victims fall around her feet.
Tom Waits
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For a songwriter, you dont really go to songwriting school you learn by listening to tunes.
Tom Waits
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Well you say that it's gospel, But I know that it's only church.
Tom Waits
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The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Tom Waits
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The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
Tom Waits
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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
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits
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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.
Tom Waits