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" 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. "

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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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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

" Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers. "

" I used to think that all great recordings happened at about 3 A.M. "

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

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

" Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like 'Chicago' is a very musical sounding name. "

" There's not much difference between what I appear to be on stage and what I am. I think people like that, that I'm not trying to pull a caper. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Somebody said I sound like an old lady, and I was really insulted by that. I'm trying to sound like Skip James and Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. "

Tom Waits

Trying

Sound

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

Tom Waits

Books

Physician

" The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable. "

" 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. "

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

Tom Waits

Really

Radio