A foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside and domestically approved romantic fancy is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing it will only be parlayed into a memory

— Tom Waits

And I remember quiet evenings trembling close to you...

— 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

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

Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk?

— 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 comfort is good for music. It's good to come out with skinned knuckles after wrestling with something you can't see. I like it when you come home at the end of the day from recording and someone says, "What happened to your hand?" And you don't even know. When you're in that place, you can dance on a broken ankle.

— Tom Waits

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

— 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-owl reporter.

— Tom Waits

I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.

— Tom Waits

I made a wish on a sliver of moonlight sly grin and a bowl full of stars

— Tom Waits