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" 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

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

" I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong - I have audio illusions. "

" The piano has been drinking, not me. "

Tom Waits

Drinking

Been

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

Tom Waits

Really

Radio

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" 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

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

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

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

Tom Waits

Books

Physician

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

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

Tom Waits

Beautiful

Ride