Tom Waits Quotes

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can't have.

Whenever you want something that you're not going to get, suddenly the whiney 3-year-old comes out in you.

I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

So many times, I have a speech ready but no dice. Always a bridesmaid, never a mother.

And weep the more, because I weep in vain.

You can never get enough of what you don't want.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

When you're away, I'm restless, lonely, Wretched, bored, dejected; only here's the rub, my darling dear, I feel the same when you're near.

I am not unaware of the saying that more tears have been shed over wishes granted than wishes denied.

Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got.

I think it's not inaccurate to say that I had a perfectly happy childhood during which I was very unhappy.

Even if an ass goes travelling he'll not come home a horse

I feel like what I'm after is not easy for me to find, and to want it to be easy... it would be absurd for me to have that ambition.

Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.

Don't try to chase something that you want to be there but isn't actually there.

It hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time.

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

I never get the girl. I wind up with a country instead.

No operatic star has yet died soon enough for me.

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

It is clear to me that people often want incompatible things. They want danger and excitement on the one hand, and safety and security on the other, and often simultaneously. Contradictory desires mean that life can never be wholly satisfying or without frustration.

Even as a child I had a strong relationship with yearning and desire. And loss. Those things spoke to me.

I may be a successful football player, but I feel like such a failure.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.