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76 quotes by Tom Waits

Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental...
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I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page. Some people write for the page, and that's a whole other... →

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People say all kinds of things about the ingredients of songs. But you know they are a kind of magic, in the sense that they may easily include a... →

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Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop.

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I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could... →

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I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.

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The piano has been drinking, not me.

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As a kid, I did want to be an old-timer, since they were the ones with the big stories and the cool clothes. I wanted to go there. Now, I guess I... →

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It's hard to win when you always lose.

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Don't look back, because someone might be gaining on you.

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I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music.

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

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There's not much difference between what I appear to be on stage and what I am. I think people like that, that I'm not trying to pull a caper.

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You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.

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