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I'm always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you're drowning, and it's there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music.
Tom Waits
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Tom Waits
Age: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 7
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Jazz Guitarist
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
Pomona
California
Thomas Alan Waits
Like
Sounds
Looking
Sound
Helicopter
Art
Helicopters
Music
Pleasing
Really
Drowning
Always
Rescue
Time
Annoying
More quotes by Tom Waits
My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.
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You have to keep busy. After all, no dog's ever pissed on a moving car.
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You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.
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Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning.
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Photos are profound because they have such short lives. They are more like fingerprints, dead leaves, rain puddles, or the corpses of flies.
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People make songs so that somebody else will hear them and want to do them. I guess it's an indication that the songs aren't so ultra-personal that they can't possibly be interpreted by anyone else.
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George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.
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Anton brings the camera. I'll bring a tuba, wear black, not shave, and take us to a burned-down Chinese restaurant. (On being photographed by his longtime photo collaborator Anton Corbijn)
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You know what I really love? The CD players in a car. How when you put the CD right up by the slot, it actually takes it out of your hand, like it's hungry. It pulls it in, and you feel like it wants more silver discs.
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There's a place down the street Seven Xs. What does that mean? Maybe it's... girls without skin.
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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.
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I sold a quart of blood and bought a half a pint of scotch
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Popular music is like a big party, and it’s a thrill sneaking in rather than being invited. Every once in a while, a guy with his shirt on inside out, wearing lipstick and a pillbox hat gets a chance to speak.
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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.
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Well it's hotter 'n blazes and all the long faces / there'll be no oasis for a dry local grazier
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Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors keep'em open they're the ears of the town
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There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.
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I did my time in the jail of your arms
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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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Chevrolet was puzzled when they discovered that their sales for the Chevy Nova were off the charts everywhere but in Latin America. They finally realized that Nova in Spanish translates to no go. Not the best name for a car... anywhere no va.
Tom Waits