Tom Waits
Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own.Collection: Wedding
It's new, it's improved, it's old fashioned.Collection: Philosophy
In terms of black music - the only music that we can call our own, that was really born here - I don't think a lot has been done to chronicle the relations between American history and where black music fits in.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Hands
Well it's hotter 'n blazes and all the long faces / there'll be no oasis for a dry local grazierCollection: Oasis
The moon was sharp enough to draw blood from a stoneCollection: Moon
I'm not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here.Collection: Fighting
Time is just memory Mixed in with Desire.Collection: Memories
She's got the whole dark forest living inside of her.Collection: Dark
They have removed the struggle to find anything. And therefore there is no genuine sense of discovery. Struggle is the first thing we know getting along the birth canal, out in the world. It's pretty basic. Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you'd go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that's gone.Collection: Struggle
The beginning of it starts at the endCollection: Ends
When you're writing‚ you're conjuring. It's a ritual‚ and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room.Collection: Writing
I've lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.Collection: Pride
If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.Collection: Men
On my gravestone, I want it to say, "I told you I was sick."Collection: Funny
It's very hard to stop doing things you're used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.Collection: Old Habits
All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutesCollection: Names
I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.Collection: Drinking
There’s nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face… I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else’s. That’s a difficult statement to live up to, but then I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.Collection: Fall
I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.Collection: Important
The trick is to have a career and have a family. It's like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.Collection: Dog
Jimmy Stewart said he stopped making movies because he didn't like the way he looked on screen anymore. I'm more the guy who says I look like hell but I'm going to see where it gets me.Collection: Guy
They say that I have no hits and that I'm difficult to work with. And they say that like it's a bad thing.Collection: Difficult
This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. "Oh, it's just a couple little innocent bad days." Well, we had a big rain. I don't know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. 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 nothin'. They're your days. Choke 'em!Collection: Couple
I'm always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you're drowning, and it's there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music.Collection: Art
I never told the truth so i can never tell a lie.Collection: Lying
I've been riding on the crest of a slump lately.Collection: Slumps
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.Collection: Smell
The Universe is making music all the time.Collection: Universe
I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong… I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.Collection: Ideas
Got a head full of lightning, a hat full of rain.Collection: Rain
when your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beansCollection: Dream
I did my time in the jail of your armsCollection: Jail
Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.Collection: Reality
I'm interested in things when I don't know what they are. Like "Hey, Ray, what the hell is this?" Oh, that's lipstick from the 1700s, that's dog food from the turn of the century, that's a hat from World War II. I'm interested in the minutiae of things. Oddities.Collection: Dog
There's a beauty of show business. It's the only business you can have a career in when you're dead.Collection: Careers
I'm the type of guy who'd sell you a rat's asshole for a wedding ring.Collection: Guy
Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one.Collection: Song
You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you.Collection: Kids
it ain't no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bonesCollection: Skins
There's nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you're not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I'm the worst. I'm the worst at that.Collection: People
I don't like the stigma that comes with being called a poet . . . So I call what I'm doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.Collection: Adventure
I’ve always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it’s amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something.Collection: Interesting
There's no prayer like desire.Collection: Prayer
We are all just monkeys with money and guns.Collection: Gun
You're innocent when you dream.Collection: Dream
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: Stories