Quote

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

Tom Waits

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tom Waits
Age: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 7
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Jazz Guitarist
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
Pomona
California
Thomas Alan Waits
Restaurant
Rays
Restaurants
Worked
Jukebox
Years
Knelt
Altar
Altars
Charles

More quotes by Tom Waits

Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
She pulls a razor from her boot and a thousand victims fall around her feet.
Tom Waits
Image
but it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music.
Tom Waits
Image
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.
Tom Waits
Image
If you walk with Jesus, he's gonna save your soul. You gotta keep the devil way down in the hole. He's got the fire and the fury at his command.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
Most vagabonds i knowed don't ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest - Tom Waits Foreign Affairs
Tom Waits
Image
Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop.
Tom Waits
Image
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
Image
You're my North Star when I'm lost and feeling blue.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
Planes and Trains and Boats and Busses Characteristically Evolve a common attitude of blue Unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport And the cargo that they're carrying is you.
Tom Waits
Image
When the weather's rough and it's whiskey in the rain it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
I danced along a colored wind/ Dangled from a rope of sand
Tom Waits
Image
Jesus Christ, this godamn rain, will someone put me on a train.
Tom Waits
Image
I think some bands thrive on the idea of changing instruments. When they're off their real instrument, the ability to go very far from the original idea is reduced.
Tom Waits
Image
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
Image
George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.
Tom Waits
Image
I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.
Tom Waits