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" 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. "
Tom Waits
Want
Back
Feel
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" Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends. "
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" I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox. "
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" 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. "
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" Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it. "
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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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" 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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" 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. "
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" The big print giveth and the small print taketh away. "
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Giveth
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" I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas. "
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Kids
Hate
" Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like 'Chicago' is a very musical sounding name. "
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" 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. "
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Time
Musicians
Travel
" I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else. "
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Everyone
Else
Just
" I think I have an adrenaline addiction, no question about that. "
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Question
Think
Addiction
" 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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See
Right
You
" 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. "
Tom Waits
My Own
Own
Looking
" 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. "
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Know
Voice
Trying
" 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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You
Adjust
Life
" Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers. "
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End
Birds
Feathers
" Music has generally involved a lot of awkward contraptions, a certain amount of heavy lifting. "
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Music
Heavy
Involved
" 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
" Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop. "
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Any
You
Place
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Blind
Reality
Man
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Drinking
Been
" 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. "
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People
Some People
Page
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Ignore
Way
Song
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Need
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Happened
Used
Think