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" 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. "

Tom Waits

Music

Together

Think

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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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound. "

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Back

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

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Done

Real

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

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Reality

Man

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Tom Waits

Big

Giveth

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

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

Tom Waits

Beautiful

Ride

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

" The piano has been drinking, not me. "

Tom Waits

Drinking

Been

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 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

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "