Tom Waits 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

“I settle for a radio station that’s currently playing a Tom Waits track. That man has so much gravel in his voice that, if he coughed, you could build a road with the contents of his phlegm.”
― Mark Capell, Cafe Insomniac

“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

“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

“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

“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 like beautiful melodies telling you terrible things," Waits said of such songs. "Is it my thorny, dark, oozing side, or is it just the way I see the world?”
― Barney Hoskyns

“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

“Now when I was a boy
My daddy sat me on his knee
And he told me
He told me many things
And he said sone
There's a lot of things in this world
You're gonna have no use for
And when you get blue
And you've lost all your dreams
There's nothin' like a campfire
And a can of beans”
― Tom Waits, The Blackrider : the casting of the magic bullets

“Now when I was a boy
My daddy sat me on his knee
And he told me
He told me many things
He said son
There's a lot of things in this world
You're gonna have no use for
And when you get blue
And you've lost all your dreams
There's nothin' like a campfire
And a can of beans”
― Tom Waits, The Blackrider : the casting of the magic bullets

“She sounded like Tom Waits had a baby with Tom Waits.”
― Max Gladstone, Empress of Forever