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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Tom Waits

Know

Voice

Trying

" 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. "

" My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. "

Tom Waits

Reality

Man

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

" 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. "

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

Tom Waits

Really

Radio

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

" 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. "

Tom Waits

Music

Culture

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

Tom Waits

Beautiful

Ride

" 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. "

" The piano has been drinking, not me. "

Tom Waits

Drinking

Been

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

" 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. "

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

Tom Waits

Done

Real

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "