“I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.”
― Tom Waits
“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”
― Tom Waits
“All that you’ve loved is all you own”
― Tom Waits
“The piano has been drinking, not me.”
― Tom Waits
“The big print giveth and the small print taketh away. ”
― Tom Waits
“And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget that history puts a saint in every dream.”
― Tom Waits
“I’ve lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.”
― Tom Waits
“I’ve been riding on the crest of a slump lately.”
― Tom Waits
“I ain’t got no spare/I ain’t got no jack/I don’t give a shit/I’m not going back”
― Tom Waits
“Oh I don’t mind going to weddings, just as long as it’s not my own…”
― Tom Waits
“Time is just memory
Mixed in with Desire.”
― Tom Waits
“It’s very hard to stop doing things you’re used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.”
― Tom Waits
“You got to tell me the brave captain
Why are the wicked so strong?
How do the angels get to sleep
When the devil leaves the porch light on?”
― Tom Waits
“They say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with. And they say that like it’s a bad thing.”
― Tom Waits
“Let me fall out of the window/
With confetti in my hair”
― Tom Waits
“We are all just monkeys with money and guns.”
― tom waits
“Never have your wallet with you onstage. It’s bad luck. You shouldn’t play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.
Tom Waits (to me, about 1986 or so)”
― Tom Waits
“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”
― Tom Waits
“The Universe is making music all the time.”
― Tom Waits
“When the weather’s rough and it’s whiskey in the rain it’s best to wrap your savior up in cellophane.”
― Tom Waits
“Now its raining its pouring
the old man is snoring
now I lay me down to sleep
I hear the sirens in the street
all my dreams are made of chrome
I have no way to get back home
I’d rather die before I wake
like Marilyn Monroe
and throw my dreams out in
the street and the
rain make ‘em grow”
― Tom Waits
“Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.”
― Tom Waits
“Most vagabonds i knowed don’t ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession’s in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest” – Tom Waits “Foreign Affairs”
― Tom Waits
“The beginning of it starts at the end”
― Tom Waits
“I’ve never been a fan of personality-conflict burgers and identity-crisis omelets with patchouli oil. I function very well on a diet that consists of Chicken Catastrophe and Eggs Overwhelming and a tall, cool Janitor-in-a-Drum. I like to walk out of a restaurant with enough gas to open a Mobil station.”
― Tom Waits
“I’ve seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train… ”
― Tom Waits
“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.”
― Tom Waits
“My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.”
― Tom Waits
“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…”
― Tom Waits
“Well you say that it’s gospel,
But I know that it’s only church.”
― Tom Waits