Best 210 quotes of Tom Waits on MyQuotes

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.

All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning.

A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.

...and I'm standing on the corner of Fifth and Vermouth.

and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades

Anton brings the camera. I'll bring a tuba, wear black, not shave, and take us to a burned-down Chinese restaurant. (On being photographed by his longtime photo collaborator Anton Corbijn)

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.

Arithmetic arithmetock Turn the hands back on the clock How does the ocean rock the boat? How did the razor find my throat? The only strings that hold me here Are tangled up around the pier.

As a kid, I did want to be an old-timer, since they were the ones with the big stories and the cool clothes. I wanted to go there. Now, I guess I want to bring that with me and go back in time.

Bill Hicks - blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built.

Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell 'em to do that, they'll find a little pot of gold.

bringing up children was]like living with a bunch of drunks...you really have to be on your toes all the time.

But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.

Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.

Chevrolet was puzzled when they discovered that their sales for the Chevy Nova were off the charts everywhere but in Latin America. They finally realized that "Nova" in Spanish translates to "no go." Not the best name for a car... anywhere "no va.

Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one.

Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.

Cross my wooden leg, swear on my glass eye.

Disneyland is Vegas for children.

Don't plant your days they turn into weeds

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.

For a songwriter, you dont really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes.

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

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.

George Bush is a fan of mine, he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him.

Got 27 children I never see.

Got a head full of lightning, a hat full of rain.

He likes a day in the studio to end, he says, "when my knees are all skinned up and my pants are wet and my hair's off to one side and I feel like I've been in the foxhole all day. I don't think comfort is good for music. It's good to come out with skinned knuckles after wrestling with something you can't see. I like it when you come home at the end of the day from recording and someone says, "What happened to your hand?" And you don't even know. When you're in that place, you can dance on a broken ankle.

He said, I'm better off without her, until I showed him my tattoo.

I admit that I ain't no angel, I admit that I ain't no saint - I'm selfish and I'm cruel and I'm blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave they're so hard to find.

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.

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

I can't listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You're just processing too much, there's no place to put it. If you go a long time without hearing music, then you hear music that nobody else hears.

I danced along a colored wind/ Dangled from a rope of sand

I did my time in the jail of your arms

I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own.

I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.

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

I don't know if any genuine meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.

I don't like hearing Beatles songs in commercials. It almost renders them useless. I think, 'Oh God, another one bites the dust.'

I don't like the stigma that comes with being called a poet . . . So I call what I'm doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.

I don't really like listening to the radio so much.

I don't think that you should be per­fectly candid and frank about the intimate details of your personal life with the public at large. Subsequently, it creates consider­able personal problems.

I dunno when I started writing really. I was, like, filling out applications and stuff real early. Last name first, first name last, sex. 'occasionally' , stuff like that. Then I was writing letters, filling out forms, writing on bathroom walls.

If I exorcise my devils, all my angels may go, too.

I finally discovered that my life is more important than show business.

If I want to walk out in the desert and heat up a can of beans on a fire, I still can. In those movies like Gattaca or whatever, the space age stuff is always all there is. But in the world there is never just one way of living. It's more like a big junkyard. Put it this way: I'm not afraid I'm going to end up on a space station in aluminium-foil underwear.

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.

If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal. The drama around even sitting in the car and singing into a tape recorder that's as big as your hand - waiting until it's very quiet, doing your thing, and then playing it back and hoping you like it - is the same basic anatomy as when you're in the recording studio, really. Sometimes it's better that way because some of the pressure is off and you can pretend it's throwaway.

If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal.