Quotes from Tom Waits

Their memory's like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can't remember Tell the things you can't forget that History puts a saint in every dream.

Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who's connected with it, the studio's gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that's left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.

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.

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

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.

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.

No matter how long it takes, true love is always worth the wait.

Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.

The folks who know the truth aren't talking.... The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!

The only thing worse than being in the Hall of Fame is not being in the Hall of Fame.

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.

There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk.

We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.

The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah,I drunk me a river since you tore me apart

Well, it's either kiss me or kill me, that's how I see it.

I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.

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

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin, and dance around in your bones.

Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.

You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her.

and the earth died screaming, while I lay dreaming...

Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don't get out much. It's true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.