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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.

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
Another
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Collected
Anything
Wrote
Ideas
Sick
Reason
Songs
Writing
Creative
Way
Song
Time
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If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it's good. I'm not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don't cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don't stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you'll never see it again.
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I don't go to church on Sunday, don't get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way
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and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades
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I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.
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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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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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I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.
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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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but it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music.
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Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
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The dog won't bite if you beat Him with a bone
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Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.
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She pulls a razor from her boot and a thousand victims fall around her feet.
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I just don't like the word 'fun'--it's like Volkswagen, or bell-bottoms, or patchouli-oil or bean-sprouts...it rubs me up the wrong way.
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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.
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You've gotta have somebody to trust, that knows a lot.
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When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that.
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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.
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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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It's hard to win when you always lose.
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