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I was a fireman. I lived in the fire sta­tion for about a year. The pay wasn't so good. It was kind of like being in the army, or what I imagine that would be like.

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
Would
Army
Like
Lived
Wasn
Fire
Imagine
Year
Kind
Tion
Good
Fireman

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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.
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Francis Ford Coppola is completely unconventional. He has a strong sense of loyalty. Great eyes. It's a diabolical undertaking in terms of organization and leadership.
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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.
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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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You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.
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If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.
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A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.
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It was a hubba, hubba, ding dang, baby you are just everythang.
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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.
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Any image I have, it's just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you're a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties.
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When the weather's rough and it's whiskey in the rain it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane.
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I danced along a colored wind/ Dangled from a rope of sand
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I'm the type of guy who'd sell you a rat's asshole for a wedding ring.
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I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture.
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I may be drunk but at least I'm not insane.
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The Music was like Electric Sugar
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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.
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All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes
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He said, I'm better off without her, until I showed him my tattoo.
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I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.
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