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It wasn't good for my nerves, that kind of work - a fireman. I've got high blood pressure. I get upset easily. I don't think that was a proper career alternative for me.

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
Wasn
Fireman
Blood
Alternative
High
Nerves
Work
Proper
Kind
Upset
Good
Easily
Think
Pressure
Thinking
Career

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It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.
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We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.
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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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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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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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I was always laughing in church.
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The dog won't bite if you beat Him with a bone
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A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.
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My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
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I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.
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I may be drunk but at least I'm not insane.
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And the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming.
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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 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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There's a place down the street Seven Xs. What does that mean? Maybe it's... girls without skin.
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