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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Tom Waits

You

Girl

Know

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

Tom Waits

Books

Physician

" 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. "

" The only thing worse than being in the Hall of Fame is not being in the Hall of Fame. "

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

" I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox. "

" I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else. "

" I think I have an adrenaline addiction, no question about 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 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. "

" You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone. "

" Some day I'm gonna be gone and people will be listening to my songs and conjuring me up. In order for that to happen, you gotta put something of yourself in it. "

Tom Waits

Listening

Yourself

" The big print giveth and the small print taketh away. "

Tom Waits

Big

Giveth

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

Tom Waits

Beautiful

Ride

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" I saw a crow building a nest, I was watching him very carefully, I was kind of stalking him and he was aware of it. And you know what they do when they become aware of someone stalking them when they build a nest, which is a very vulnerable place to be? They build a decoy nest. It's just for you. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

Tom Waits

Voice

" George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved. "

" I look for things that are left of center, something you've only seen your whole life, but never heard. Hit it! With a stick! I have a guitar made out of a 2x4 that I bought in Cleveland. "

" 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. "

" My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult. "

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