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I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.

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
Musician
Pedestrian
Great
Pedestrians
Always
Vocabulary
Think
Instrument
Thinking
Appreciation
Like
Main
Instruments
Jazz

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Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder.
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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.
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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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Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.
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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.
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I made a wish on a sliver of moonlight A sly grin and a bowl full of stars
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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 danced along a colored wind/ Dangled from a rope of sand
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She pulls a razor from her boot and a thousand victims fall around her feet.
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Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
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People make songs so that somebody else will hear them and want to do them. I guess it's an indication that the songs aren't so ultra-personal that they can't possibly be interpreted by anyone else.
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I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.
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A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.
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I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch
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I hope I'm becoming more eccentric. More room in the brain.
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Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
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I may be drunk but at least I'm not insane.
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The things you absorb you will ultimately secrete. It's all out there and available for you to enjoy...and be nourished by.
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I saw a crow building a nest, I was watching him very carefully, I was kind of stalking him and he was aware of it. And you know what they do when they become aware of someone stalking them when they build a nest, which is a very vulnerable place to be? They build a decoy nest. It's just for you.
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We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.
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