Tom Waits Quotes

Years from now, after I'm gone, someone will listen to what I've done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they'll hear my guitars speaking for me.

In everything I do, I find some of myself, or a lot of myself, and put it into the role.

Music is something that should speak for itself, straight from the heart. It took me a long time to understand that.

Let me create great music, go in the studio, and possibly become a memory and a time stamp in people's lives - and just give the best performances, because I know that's all that really matters.

I'd like to think that, at the end of the day, you can look at the things that I made as a young person and the things I'll continue to make as I get older and they'll be consistently interesting and soulful things, and if you like them they'll be a part of your dimension, as well.

To be an artist, you don't have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It's just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.

Music is such an intensely personal thing for me, and I knew if I was going to do it, it would be in my own way.

Guitar is the best form of self-expression I know. Everything else, and I'm just sort of tripping around, trying to figure my way through life.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Whether it be in acting, music, or even in dancing, I only want to do things that I truly connect to, and with my music, it's everything that I am.

If you look at the content of songs people write, it's usually about the things they know best.

Music has this emotional thing to it, and it touches people in crazy ways. The power of having that power is something that, once you have it, you don't want it to ever end.

Most of the songs I wrote are personal.

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

I do not feel any artist can produce great art without putting great personality into it. It is always a piece of you that goes on the screen or the canvass.

I'm doing what I do for the right reasons. I love the music that I make.

So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention.

I'm not afraid to use my personal experiences and put them into a song. I think that's when you get the best stuff anyway, when it's real emotion.

I'm going to keep on finding out the kind of man I am through my music. That's the one place I can be free. But the reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

I want to touch people's lives with my music and my lyrics.

The mission of the playwright is to look in his heart and write, to write whatever concerns him at the moment; to write with passion and conviction. Of course the measure of the man will be the measure of the play.

My work is intensely personal.

How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.

That's the thing about music: It's forever. Hopefully, you captured a moment musically that has a timeless quality people will find relevant to their lives at any point. That's the whole idea about what I love about art and music.