Lowside of the Road Quotes

“I like things that are kind of falling apart," he admitted to another interviewer. "[Because] I come from a broken home, I guess. I like things that have been ignored or need to be put back together.”
― Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

“You can't really be too concerned with what people think of you. You're on your own adventure of growth and discovery. Like Charles Bukowski said, 'People think I'm down on Fifth and Main at the Blarney Stone, but really I'm on top floor of the health club with a towel in my lap, watching Johnny Carson.' So it's not always good to be where people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well ... which is easily done, because then you don't have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else.”
― Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

“We’re all holding onto something,” Waits said. “None of us wants to come out of the ground.” For Waits, “Hold On” was “two people who are in love, writing a song... about being in love”.”
― Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

“Instead he’d “send his songs out there... tell ‘em to stick together and look out for their brothers”.”
― Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

“I'm not a politician," he told me. "I keep my mouth shut because I don't want to put my foot in it. But at a certain point, saying absolutely nothing is a political statement all of its own.”
― Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

“You said this was going to be funny, Jim," Waits barked. "Maybe you better just circle the jokes 'cause I don't see 'em.”
― Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

“I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else's," Waits said on the album's release.”
― Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

“I do believe in the mysteries of things, about myself and the things I see. I enjoy being puzzled and arriving at my own incorrect conclusions.”
― Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits