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" I don't really like listening to the radio so much. "
Tom Waits
Really
Radio
Like
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I guess I've always lived upside down when I want things I can't have. "
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" I didn't really identify with the music of my own generation, but I was very curious about the music of others. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" George Bush is a fan of mine, he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him. "
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Dealer
Coke
Seventies
" Oh, I got a beautiful 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille four-door. No one will ride in it with me. "
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" 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. "
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Word
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" We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. "
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Happiness
Being
Information
" 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. "
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Time
Back
Cool
" 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. "
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Song
Think
Streets
" 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. "
Tom Waits
You
Feel
Hungry
" I'm so horny the crack of dawn better watch out. "
Tom Waits
Watch
Out
Horny
" I think I have an adrenaline addiction, no question about that. "
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Question
Think
Addiction
" 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. "
Tom Waits
People
Some People
Page
" I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy. "
Tom Waits
Rather
Than
Free
" The piano has been drinking, not me. "
Tom Waits
Me
Drinking
Been
" 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. "
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My Own
Own
Looking
" I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music. "
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More
Music
Culture
" I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else. "
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Everyone
Else
Just
" You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone. "
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Listening
Better
Hope
" I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It's an early analog synthesizer; it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices - everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra. "
Tom Waits
Early
Everything
Orchestra
" Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder. "
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Wake Up
Think
Story
" Don't look back, because someone might be gaining on you. "
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Back
Someone
You
" Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs. "
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Goodbye
Most
Road
" My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. "
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Like
Reality
Man
" 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. "
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Know
" The sight of the first woman in the minimal two-piece was as explosive as the detonation of the atomic bomb by the U.S. at Bikini Island in the Marshall Isles, hence the naming of the bikini. "
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Island
Woman
Atomic Bomb
" 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. "
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Music
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Think