Quote

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.

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
Another
Didn
Collected
Anything
Wrote
Ideas
Sick
Reason
Songs
Writing
Creative
Way
Song
Time
Write

More quotes by 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
and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades
Tom Waits
Image
Well you say that it's gospel, But I know that it's only church.
Tom Waits
Image
Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors keep'em open they're the ears of the town
Tom Waits
Image
A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.
Tom Waits
Image
I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes
Tom Waits
Image
I saw a crow building a nest, I was watching him very carefully, I was kind of stalking him and he was aware of it. And you know what they do when they become aware of someone stalking them when they build a nest, which is a very vulnerable place to be? They build a decoy nest. It's just for you.
Tom Waits
Image
It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.
Tom Waits
Image
I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
Tom Waits
Image
Planes and Trains and Boats and Busses Characteristically Evolve a common attitude of blue Unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport And the cargo that they're carrying is you.
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
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
I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong… I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.
Tom Waits
Image
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.
Tom Waits
Image
the earth is not my home, I'm just passing by
Tom Waits
Image
I was always laughing in church.
Tom Waits