Some day I'm gonna be gone and people will be listening to my songs and conjuring me up. In order for that… — 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
Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who's connected with… — 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
Every single song has its own individual character and you can't treat each song the same way, because it wants to be… — 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
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
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
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
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. — Tom Waits Copy Share
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
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
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
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… — Tom Waits Copy Share
