The studio is torn down, all the people who played on it are dead, the instruments have been sold off. But you are listening to a moment that happened in time sixty years ago and you are hearing it just as sharp as when it was made. That remains an amazing thing to me.

— Tom Waits

Tom Waits Quotes

Words are music, really.

— Tom Waits

New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.

— Tom Waits

Sometimes when you’re making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning.

— Tom Waits

With families and music, you’re usually looking for something that can make you unique.

— Tom Waits

I’m not one of those people the tabloids chase around.

— Tom Waits

The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change.

— Tom Waits

I’m trying to get music ideas that come and keep them alive. It’s like carrying water in your hands. I want to keep it all, and sometimes by the time you get to the studio you have nothing.

— Tom Waits

The blues and gospel stuff seemed to go together.

— Tom Waits

And I remember quiet evenings trembling close to you...

— Tom Waits

I’m so goddamn horny, the crack of dawn better be careful around me!

— Tom Waits

Everything you can think of is true.

— Tom Waits

Fishin’ for a good time starts with throwin’ in your line.

— Tom Waits

There is no such thing as nonfiction.

— Tom Waits

New York, of course, is to be in endless surreal situations where a fifty-thousand dollar, gun-metal Mercedez pulls up into a puddle of blood, and out steps a twenty-five karat blonde transvestite with a two dollar wristwatch.

— Tom Waits

You don’t meet nice girls in coffee shops.

— Tom Waits

Never trust a scarecrow wearin’ shades after dark.

— Tom Waits

You know, people only travel really with their seeds, and with their songs. In Bosnia they interviewed a lot of refugees... they’d left with nothing and they asked them what they had, and they had seeds in their pockets from their gardens and their songs. That was it. Once you’re nourished in that most fundamental way, everything else follows.

— Tom Waits

Singing is just doing interesting things to the air. Elongating it and twisting it into shapes.

— Tom Waits

The studio is torn down, all the people who played on it are dead, the instruments have been sold off. But you are listening to a moment that happened in time sixty years ago and you are hearing it just as sharp as when it was made. That remains an amazing thing to me.

— Tom Waits

All my friends are dead, or else they’re not feeling too good.

— Tom Waits
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