Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
when your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans
If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal.
bringing up children was]like living with a bunch of drunks...you really have to be on your toes all the time.
Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On
You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.
I didn't really identify with the music of my own generation, but I was very curious about the music of others.
I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.
I like writing melody without an instrument. It's just so - it's more like the choreography of a bee; you just go.
It's hard to play with a bagpipe player. It's like an exotic bird. I love the sound, it's like strangling a goose.
My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.
Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors keep'em open they're the ears of the town
Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.
I'm not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here.
The things you absorb you will ultimately secrete. It's all out there and available for you to enjoy...and be nourished by.
I don't go to church on Sunday, don't get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way
I don't know if any genuine meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.
I don't know if any genuine, meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.
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.
They called it the Terminal Bar but they had no idea that like twenty years later the place'd be filling up with terminal cases.
I don't like hearing Beatles songs in commercials. It almost renders them useless. I think, 'Oh God, another one bites the dust.'
I’ve never met anyone who made it with a chick because they owned a Tom Waits album. I’ve got all three, and it’s never helped me.
I worry about a lot of things, but I don’t worry about achievements. I worry primarily about whether there are nightclubs in Heaven.
Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning.
I like Thelonious Monk, he's so gnarled, he's like a piece of machinery that's pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own.
I just don't like the word 'fun'--it's like Volkswagen, or bell-bottoms, or patchouli-oil or bean-sprouts...it rubs me up the wrong way.
I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music.
Bill Hicks - blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built.
Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don't get out much. It's true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.
You got to tell me the brave captain Why are the wicked so strong? How do the angels get to sleep When the devil leaves the porch light on?
Photos are profound because they have such short lives. They are more like fingerprints, dead leaves, rain puddles, or the corpses of flies.
Never have your wallet with you onstage. It's bad luck. You shouldn't play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.
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.
There's a lot of intelligence in the hands.When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.
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.
I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.
If you walk with Jesus, he's gonna save your soul. You gotta keep the devil way down in the hole. He's got the fire and the fury at his command.
The trick is to have a career and have a family. It's like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.
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.
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.
I don't like the stigma that comes with being called a poet . . . So I call what I'm doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.
The ocean doesn't want me today, But I'll come back tomorrow to play. The riptide is waging And the life guard's away But the ocean doesn't want me today
If you're a writer you know that the stories don't come to you, you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were.
If you're a writer, you know that the stories don't come to you - you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were.
When you say you're doing an opera, it's like when you're a seven-year-old and say, 'I'm off to Washington, Dad.' You kind of go, 'Sure. Sure you are, son.'
You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don't want to live any other way.
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. You find that out really fast.
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.
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.
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.