Tom Waits Long Quotations

Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it.

There's a certain fast-food approach to the whole music thing that's changed the role it plays for us all. You are doing it while you are doing other things. Not that that is new - people have had music on in the background as long as there has been music.

You want soldiers who, when they get to a river after a long march, don't start rooting for their canteen in their pack, but just dive right in.

Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own...

Well it's hotter 'n blazes and all the long faces / there'll be no oasis for a dry local grazier

I can't listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You're just processing too much, there's no place to put it. If you go a long time without hearing music, then you hear music that nobody else hears.

Most vagabonds i knowed don't ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest" - Tom Waits "Foreign Affairs