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

“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

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

— 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

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

— 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

“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

“Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.”

— 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

“When your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans”

— Tom Waits

“There ain't no devil there's just god when he's drunk”

— Tom Waits

“You must have brought the bad weather with you
The sky's the color of lead
All you've left me is a feather
On an unmade bed”

— Tom Waits

“God's away, God's away, God's away on business. Business!”

— Tom Waits

“There ain't no devil, it's just God when he's drunk.”

— Tom Waits

“An all time favorite: The large print giveth, the small print taketh away.”

— Tom Waits

“There ain't no such thing as the devil that's just god when he's drunk.”

— Tom Waits

I guess I've always lived upside down when I want things I can't have.

— Tom Waits

“I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.”

— Tom Waits

“You know what I really love? The CD players in a car. How when you put the CD right up by the slot, it actually takes it out of your hand, like it's hungry. It pulls it in, and you feel like it wants more silver discs.”

— Tom Waits

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

— Tom Waits

You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don't want to live any other way.

— Tom Waits

“Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs.”

— Tom Waits

George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.

— Tom Waits

“I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.”

— Tom Waits

“Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now.”

— Tom Waits

“You have to keep busy. After all, no dog's ever pissed on a moving car.”

— Tom Waits

She's got the whole dark forest living inside of her.

— 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

Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing
with the air.

— Tom Waits

“Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?”

— Tom Waits

“(When asked for advice for younger musicians) Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell 'em to do that, they'll find a little pot of gold.”

— Tom Waits

“There's truths there that spiral out of what appears to be just a word game. That's what I find mystifying about the meanings of things: they kind of unscrew themselves from the practical words.”

— Tom Waits

Cross my wooden leg, swear on my glass eye.

— Tom Waits

All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes

— Tom Waits

“You want soldiers who, when they get to a river after a long march, don't start rooting for their canteen in their pack, but just dive right in.”

— Tom Waits

“A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.”

— Tom Waits

“The ocean doesn't want me today,
But I'll come back tomorrow to play.
The riptide is waging
And the life guard's away
But the ocean doesn't want me today”

— Tom Waits

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

— Tom Waits

“Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors keep'em open they're the ears of the town”

— Tom Waits

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

— Tom Waits

“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)”

— Tom Waits

“There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.”

— Tom Waits

“It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.”

— Tom Waits

“Got 27 children I never see.”

— Tom Waits

The things you absorb you will ultimately secrete. It's all out there and available for you to enjoy ... and be nourished by.

— Tom Waits

“Presley's what I go by, why don't you change the station.”

— Tom Waits

“I'm interested in things when I don't know what they are. Like "Hey, Ray, what the hell is this?" Oh, that's lipstick from the 1700s, that's dog food from the turn of the century, that's a hat from World War II. I'm interested in the minutiae of things. Oddities.”

— Tom Waits

“I'm not one of those people the tabloids chase around.”

— Tom Waits

“There's a certain fast-food approach to the whole music thing that's changed the role it plays for us all. You are doing it while you are doing other things. Not that that is new - people have had music on in the background as long as there has been music.”

— Tom Waits