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.
Don't look back, because someone might be gaining on you.
I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.
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.
It's hard to win when you always lose.
What you want is for music to love you back. That's why you pay your dues. You want to feel like you belong and are part of this symbiosis, metamorphosis, whatever you want to call it.
I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.
Somebody said I sound like an old lady, and I was really insulted by that. I'm trying to sound like Skip James and Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.
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.
Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it.
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 thing. I'm going for what it sounds like right away, so it may not even look good on the page.
I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else.
George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.
Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.
Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs.
You know when you throw a party, you think people will show up and no one will like each other. It's like that with music - parts of your musical psyche have never met other parts. You wonder if you should get them together.
But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.
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.
Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop.
You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.
When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that.
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.
I don't like listening to records a lot after they're done. There's just no real nourishment there for me.
If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal.
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.
The only thing worse than being in the Hall of Fame is not being in the Hall of Fame.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.Collection: Baby
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.Collection: Happiness
I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.Collection: Acceptance
Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothing.Collection: Bad Day
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.Collection: Funny
You have to keep busy. After all, no dog's ever pissed on a moving car.Collection: Dog
The folks who know the truth aren't talking.... The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!Collection: Truth
Once upon a time there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. And they grew next to each other. And every day the straight tree would look at the crooked tree and he would say, "You're crooked. You've always been crooked and you'll continue to be crooked. But look at me! Look at me!" said the straight tree. He said, "I'm tall and I'm straight." And then one day the lumberjacks came into the forest and looked around, and the manager in charge said, "Cut all the straight trees." And that crooked tree is still there to this day, growing strong and growing strange.Collection: Strong
I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.Collection: Music
I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.Collection: Seeds
If you get far enough away you'll be on your way back home.Collection: Home
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Running
The way you do anything is the way you do everything.Collection: Way
If I exorcise my devils, all my angels may go, too.Collection: Angel
Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.Collection: Dream
I always thought songs are movies for the ears and films are like songs for the eyes.Collection: Song
You cannot really be too concerned with what people think of you. You're on your own adventure of growth and discovery. So it's not always good to be who 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.Collection: Adventure
Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.Collection: Philosophy
If you're a writer you know that the stories don't come to you, you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were.Collection: Men
God's away, God's away, God's away on business. Business!Collection: Boiler Room
I really like your playingCollection: Piano
For a songwriter, you dont really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes.Collection: School