Quotes by Tom Waits

About Tom Waits:

Thomas Alan is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding like "it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musicals and has acted in supporting roles in films, including Paradise Alley and Bram Stoker's Dracula. He also starred in Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film Down by Law. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One from the Heart.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.

Tom Waits

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

Tom Waits

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

Tom Waits

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

Tom Waits

I think I have an adrenaline addiction, no question about that.

Tom Waits

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

Tom Waits

Any image I have, it's just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you're a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties.

Tom Waits

I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It's an early analog synthesizer; it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices - everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra.

Tom Waits

Some day I'm gonna be gone and people will be listening to my songs and conjuring me up. In order for that to happen, you gotta put something of yourself in it.

Tom Waits

I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else.

Tom Waits

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

Tom Waits

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

Tom Waits

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.

Tom Waits

People say all kinds of things about the ingredients of songs. But you know they are a kind of magic, in the sense that they may easily include a stain on your bedroom wall... and a variety of mis-recollections. And then you name it after a girl's na...

Tom Waits

I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own.

Tom Waits

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.

Tom Waits

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.

Tom Waits

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

I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.

Tom Waits

The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

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; they'll just make another one.

Tom Waits

Author Bio

  • NameTom Waits
  • DescriptionAmerican singer-songwriter and actor
  • BornDecember 7, 1949
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionSinger-songwriter; Singer; Actor; Composer; Pianist; Writer; Guitarist