With families and music, you're usually looking for something that can make you unique. — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning. — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
In terms of black music - the only music that we can call our own, that was really born here - I… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
Most changes in music, most exciting things that happen in music, occur through a miscommunication between people "I thought you said this."… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think.… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
I never looked at music as a serious venture. There was very little encouragement from my family. I didn't have anybody to… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
I didn't really identify with the music of my own generation, but I was very curious about the music of others. — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
Popular music is like a big party, and it’s a thrill sneaking in rather than being invited. Every once in a while,… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
People say all kinds of things about the ingredients of songs. But you know they are a kind of magic, in the… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
I can't listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You're just… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
You know, we just buy music now. We don't make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
People make songs so that somebody else will hear them and want to do them. I guess it's an indication that the… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
Music has generally involved a lot of awkward contraptions, a certain amount of heavy lifting. — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors.… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
Bill Hicks - blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built. — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
“an all time favorite: "The large print giveth, the small print taketh away.” — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
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… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
I'm always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you're drowning, and it's… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
I was born in the back seat of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone and with the meter still running. I emerged… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
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… — Tom Waits Copy Share Image
