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
Made
Things
Life
People
Backstage
Allowed
Fact
Facts

More quotes by Tom Waits

Image
I guess I've always lived upside down when I want things I can't have.
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
I know a girl, she been married so many times, she got rice marks all over her face
Tom Waits
Image
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
Tom Waits
Image
The blues and gospel stuff seemed to go together.
Tom Waits
Image
The dog won't bite if you beat Him with a bone
Tom Waits
Image
You know, we just buy music now. We don't make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think it's so important that people develop and subscribe to and have confidence in their own ability to make music, however rough it is.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
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
Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own.
Tom Waits
Image
Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it they'll just make another one.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
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
Now its raining its pouring the old man is snoring now I lay me down to sleep I hear the sirens in the street all my dreams are made of chrome I have no way to get back home I’d rather die before I wake like Marilyn Monroe and throw my dreams out in the street and the rain make ‘em grow
Tom Waits
Image
Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
Tom Waits
Image
If you're a writer you know that the stories don't come to you, you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were.
Tom Waits
Image
It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.
Tom Waits
Image
I walked 500 miles just to see a halo, when I opened my eyes I was blind as can be.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
I like Thelonious Monk, he's so gnarled, he's like a piece of machinery that's pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own.
Tom Waits