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I don't know if any genuine meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.

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
Results
Song
Gorilla
Change
Gorillas
Ever
Peanuts
Kind
Throwing
Like
Meaningful
Genuine
Result

More quotes by Tom Waits

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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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Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.
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Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs.
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If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound.
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In terms of black music - the only music that we can call our own, that was really born here - I don't think a lot has been done to chronicle the relations between American history and where black music fits in.
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Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?
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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.
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Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.
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Jesus Christ, this godamn rain, will someone put me on a train.
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I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.
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The fact is most of the things that people know about me are made up. My own life is backstage. So what you know about me is only what I allowed you to know about me.
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Any image I have, it's just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you're a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties.
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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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Well, they'll bark you down like carneys, sell you Christmas cards in June.
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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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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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It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.
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I know a girl, she been married so many times, she got rice marks all over her face
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I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
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I'm not one of those people the tabloids chase around.
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