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" I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture. "

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" 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. "

Tom Waits

Wonder

Music

Conversation

" Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who's connected with it, the studio's gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that's left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago. "

" 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. "

" Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. "

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

" 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. "

" Music has generally involved a lot of awkward contraptions, a certain amount of heavy lifting. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Tom Waits

Looking

Know

" Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure. "

" Oh, I got a beautiful 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille four-door. No one will ride in it with me. "

Tom Waits

Beautiful

Ride

" 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. "

" It's hard to win when you always lose. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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 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. "