Tom Waits > Quotes

“My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day.

I told them this story:
In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.”
― Tom Waits

“There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk.”
― Tom Waits

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
― Tom Waits

“Well I got a bad liver and broken heart,
yeah,I drunk me a river since you
tore me apart”
― Tom Waits

“Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.”
― Tom Waits

“Well, it's either kiss me or kill me, that's how I see it.”
― Tom Waits

“it ain't no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones”
― Tom Waits

“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.”
― Tom Waits

“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.”
― Tom Waits

“I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.”
― Tom Waits

“This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. "Oh, it's just a couple little innocent bad days." Well, we had a big rain. I don't know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothin'. They're your days. Choke 'em!”
― Tom Waits

“...and the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming...”
― Tom Waits

“You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her.”
― Tom Waits

“Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.”
― Tom Waits

“Q: What’s hard for you?

A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.”
― Tom Waits

“The piano has been drinking, not me.”
― Tom Waits

“Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don't get out much. It's true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.”
― 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

“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

“I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.”
― 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

“The big print giveth and the small print taketh away. ”
― Tom Waits

“I’ve always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it’s amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something.”
― Tom Waits

“I've lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.”
― Tom Waits

“I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
― Tom Waits

“Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own...”
― Tom Waits

“All that you've loved is all you own”
― 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

“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

“the earth is not my home, I'm just passing by”
― Tom Waits

“I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train... ”
― Tom Waits

“We are all just monkeys with money and guns.”
― 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

“...but it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music.”
― 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

“I walked 500 miles just to see a halo, when I opened my eyes I was blind as can be.”
― Tom Waits

“Time is just memory
Mixed in with Desire.”
― 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

“Well you say that it's gospel,
But I know that it's only church.”
― Tom Waits

“slept all night in the cedar grove,
i was born to ramble, born to rove,
some men are searchin' for the holy grail,
but there ain't nothin' sweeter
than ridin' the rails”
― Tom Waits

“The Music was like Electric Sugar”
― Tom Waits

“and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades”
― Tom Waits

“You know there ain't no devil, that's just God when he's drunk...”
― Tom Waits

“Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On”
― 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

“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

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
― Tom Waits

“It's the same with men as with horses and dogs, nothing wants to die.”
― Tom Waits