Quotes from Tom Waits

I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.

If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal.

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

The piano has been drinking, not me.

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 stain on your bedroom wall... and a variety of mis-recollections. And then you name it after a girl's name that you just made up.

The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.

A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.

I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.

The Music was like Electric Sugar

The Universe is making music all the time.

You can drive out nature with a pitch fork But it always comes roaring back again.

Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.

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

I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.

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

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

Did the devil make the world while God was sleeping?

If you get far enough away you'll be on your way back home.

the earth is not my home, I'm just passing by

I hope I'm becoming more eccentric. More room in the brain.

I'm so horny the crack of dawn better watch out.

I bark my voice out through a closed throat, pretty much. It's more, perhaps, like a dog in some ways. It does have its limitations, but I'm learning different ways to keep it alive.

There's no prayer like desire.

There's a lot of intelligence in the hands.When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.