Quote

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.

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
Backstage
Allowed
Fact
Facts
Made
Things
Life
People

More quotes by Tom Waits

Image
They called it the Terminal Bar but they had no idea that like twenty years later the place'd be filling up with terminal cases.
Tom Waits
Image
Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
Tom Waits
Image
He said, I'm better off without her, until I showed him my tattoo.
Tom Waits
Image
My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
Every single song has its own individual character and you can't treat each song the same way, because it wants to be treated differently and there are songs that are like scared birds that you have to sneak up on over the course of months in the woods.
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
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.
Tom Waits
Image
I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.
Tom Waits
Image
All medical procedures require two hands, so in a sense it's like when you play an instrument. That's what they call things that they use in their work: They call them instruments. A lot of people start out majoring in medicine and drop it and change their major to music.
Tom Waits
Image
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
Tom Waits
Image
The blues and gospel stuff seemed to go together.
Tom Waits
Image
You're innocent when you dream.
Tom Waits
Image
I made a wish on a sliver of moonlight A sly grin and a bowl full of stars
Tom Waits
Image
When you say you're doing an opera, it's like when you're a seven-year-old and say, 'I'm off to Washington, Dad.' You kind of go, 'Sure. Sure you are, son.'
Tom Waits
Image
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
Image
A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.
Tom Waits
Image
It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.
Tom Waits
Image
Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs.
Tom Waits
Image
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