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All Quotes by author - Tom Waits

" All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning. "

" Any image I have, it's just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you're a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties. "

" Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop. "

" As a kid, I did want to be an old-timer, since they were the ones with the big stories and the cool clothes. I wanted to go there. Now, I guess I want to bring that with me and go back in time. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk. "

" 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. "

" George Bush is a fan of mine, he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him. "

" 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. "

" I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath. "

" 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 didn't really identify with the music of my own generation, but I was very curious about the music of others. "

" I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own. "

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

" I don't know if any genuine, meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla. "

" I don't like listening to records a lot after they're done. There's just no real nourishment there for me. "

" I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter. "

" I don't really like listening to the radio so much. "

" I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy. "

" If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it's good. I'm not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don't cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don't stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you'll never see it again. "

" If you are making a record, you are the one saying 'action', and you are the one saying 'cut,' and you have to be sure that the most interesting thing is not going on outside the frame. "

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

" 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. "

" If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound. "

" If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment. "

" I guess I've always lived upside down when I want things I can't have. "

" I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas. "

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