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

- Tom Waits

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

- Tom Waits

Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like 'Chicago' is a very musical sounding name.

- 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

You know what I really love? The CD players in a car. How when you put the CD right up by the slot, it actually takes it out of your hand, like it's hungry. It pulls it in, and you feel like it wants more silver discs.

- Tom Waits

I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.

- Tom Waits

I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.

- 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

When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.

- Tom Waits

Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.

- Tom Waits

I used to think that all great recordings happened at about 3 A.M.

- 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

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

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

- Tom Waits

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

- Tom Waits

Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs.

- Tom Waits

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

- 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