Quote

Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning.

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
Meaning
Sound
Words
Mutate
Making
Evolve
Song
Slowly
Sometimes
Actual
Make
Sounds
Songs

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I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.
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It's hard to win when you always lose.
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I was always laughing in church.
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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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Now it's closing time/the music's fading out.
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Misery is the River of the World
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I’ve never met anyone who made it with a chick because they owned a Tom Waits album. I’ve got all three, and it’s never helped me.
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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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There's nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you're not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I'm the worst. I'm the worst at that.
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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.
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I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.
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I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.
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It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.
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There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Leona Helmsley's dog made $12 million last year... and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000. It's just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains.
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