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

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What you want is for music to love you back. That's why you pay your dues. You want to feel like you belong and are part of this symbiosis, metamorphosis, whatever you want to call it.
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There's a lot of intelligence in the hands.When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.
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I'm not one of those people the tabloids chase around.
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I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong… I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.
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The Universe is making music all the time.
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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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The piano has been drinking, not me.
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I don't think that you should be per­fectly candid and frank about the intimate details of your personal life with the public at large. Subsequently, it creates consider­able personal problems.
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I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music.
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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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A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.
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You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.
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You're innocent when you dream.
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It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.
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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.
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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.
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I've lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.
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The ship is sinking The ship is sinking There's leak, there's a leak,in the boiler room The poor, the lame, the blind Who ore the ones that we kept in charge Killers, thieves, and lawyers God's Away, God's away God's away on Business
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Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own.
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My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.
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