More than anything, the job afforded Waits countless opportunities to gather scraps of conversation he heard from passers-by on the street. “I’d bring my books and my coffee and my cigarettes and put my feet up,” he remembered. “And I’d read my Kerouac and watch the cars go by, and I just felt like I was on fire and I had a reason to live. Sitting there, my own ordinary life was just lifted out of that and I was all dusted with something sparkling.”
