Tom Waits Quotes

I played Lucifer once, which is sort of a difficult character to research. I thought to myself, "We all have the potential to be selfish, to be cruel - at least to think evil thoughts, even if we don't ever act out on them. Even if we don't ever think we behave badly, we probably do more than we realize."

If thou has not seen the devil, look at thine own self.

Every being has flaws; the potential is always there to connect to the light or to darkness.

I don't think you can be good in life without acknowledging the part of you that isn't good.

If we are completely honest with ourselves, everyone has a dark side to their personalities.

I am a man of many flaws and contradictions.

"Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."

I too have my own demons, and I have struggled. I've made my own mistakes, and I'm not proud of them.

My actual personality probably lies someplace between the two.

I definitely have a dark side of me that can be pretty vicious... as we all do.

Evil is a source of moral intelligence in the sense that we need to learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.

I have a perfectionist mentality; I want things to be right. But I've had a little duel over the years with that mentality. Because it can inhibit you.

Our enemies are our evil deeds and their memories, our pride, our selfishness, our malice, our passions, which by conscience or by habit pursue us with a relentlessness past the power of figure to express.

I have to live with both my selves as best I may.

I think we all carry the seeds of our own destruction. You really have to be aware that just because something is good, it doesn't mean it's not going to trigger a self-destructive impulse.

Those darker sides, the things that we don't want to admit about ourselves - that's what excites me.

We have our insides and our outsides, and I find the struggles between the two, as well as the occasions of harmony between the two, fascinating.

We will never be authentically angry or authentically fair while we are trying to be both at once.

You've got to know what your 'thing' is, and you've got to call it a 'thing,' whether it's meanness, nastiness, un-forgiveness, arrogance, ego, resistance, rebelliousness or defiance. Everybody's got a 'thing,' and once you call your 'thing' a 'thing,' we can give it a place to be or dismiss it.

I can be really annoying, but I also feel like I'm a nice person.

I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

It's easy to point out the evil in other people, but that can be found in all of us. That selfishness, that is something we all have in us. Sometimes you are successful at dealing with it, and sometimes you are not.

Everyone has monsters and demons within themselves. They're metaphors for the human condition.

Two people live within me. One's a very savvy businessperson; the other's a party girl.

We see the worst versions of ourselves - things we did or could have done - in the characters who inspire us.