“ New York, of course, is to be in endless surreal situations where a fifty-thousand dollar, gun-metal Mercedez pulls up into a puddle of blood, and out steps a twenty-five karat blonde transvestite wit… Tom Waits
“ You must have brought the bad weather with youThe sky's the color of leadAll you've left me is a featherOn an unmade bed Tom Waits
“ My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Tom Waits
“ My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, t… Tom Waits
“ 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. Tom Waits
“ I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night… Tom Waits
“ 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. Tom Waits
“ 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… Tom Waits
“ You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone. Tom Waits
“ Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it;… Tom Waits
“ 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 l… Tom Waits
“ He likes a day in the studio to end, he says, "when my knees are all skinned up and my pants are wet and my hair's off to one side and I feel like I've been in the foxhole all day. I don't think comfo… Tom Waits
“ The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. Tom Waits
