Top 120 Tom Petty Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Do something you really like, and hopefully it pays the rent. As far as I’m concerned, that’s success.”

— Tom Petty

52. “Gonna wind it up on my guitar. Gonna make that silver sing.”

— Tom Petty

53. “We haven’t always been boy scouts, but we never lost sight of the music, Let me remind you that this ain’t the end.”

— Tom Petty

54. “I’m not interested in the TV much. I quit watching the news a couple years ago and my outlook on life has gotten a whole lot better.”

— Tom Petty

55. “Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have kicked you around some. Tell me, why you want to lay there, revel in your abandon?”

— Tom Petty

56. “I always tell my kids, “Find something that you love and within that you’ll find some job that you can do and you’ll always be happy. You’ll go to a job that you want to go to.””

— Tom Petty

57. “I developed a problem with authority. Any time that authority was what I interpreted as being unjust, I stood up to it, and that became my personality.”

— Tom Petty

58. “We don’t really make bad records, though some people might like some more than others. And we have never really done a bad show. So I think in a way maybe we’ve been taken for granted.”

— Tom Petty

59. “Every verse a diamond, every chorus gold, the sound was my salvation. It was only everything, before money became king.”

— Tom Petty

60. “I don’t think it’s a good attitude in your life to feel that you have to be rich to have self-esteem.”

— Tom Petty

61. “I ain’t really sure, but it seems I remember the good times.”

— Tom Petty

62. “I love the music. I’m never, ever tired of playing it.”

— Tom Petty

63. “There goes your freedom of choice, there goes the last human voice.”

— Tom Petty

64. “I always liked the idea of the guitar – because cowboys played the guitar.”

— Tom Petty

65. “My mama was a rocker way back in fifty-three, buys them old records that they sell on TV.”

— Tom Petty

66. “You need eagles wings to get over things that make no sense in this world.”

— Tom Petty

67. “I had the radio on, I was driving. Trees flew by, me and Del were singing, Little Runaway, I was flying.”

— Tom Petty

68. “At twilight time the smog makes a rainbow.”

— Tom Petty

69. “I like a good beer. Of course, I’ll drink a bad one too. Let no person thirst for lack of real ale! Thank god for long-necked bottles, the angel’s remedy.”

— Tom Petty

70. “She grew up hard and she grew up fast, in the age of television.”

— Tom Petty

71. “The poison came in liquid, she was naked all the time.”

— Tom Petty

72. “I think to be successful you have to work really hard but you also have to have a little bit of luck.”

— Tom Petty

73. “Eddie waited ’til he finished high school, he went to Hollywood, got a tattoo.”

— Tom Petty

74. “Honey, don’t walk out, I’m too drunk to follow.”

— Tom Petty

75. “I’m not trying to be cool. I have a problem with lights. I have one eye that’s become super-sensitive to lighting, so I do wear sunglasses quite a bit.”

— Tom Petty

76. “It’s funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can’t afford the music.”

— Tom Petty

77. “When you kill somebody’s little sister with a missile, he’s going to hate you forever. And the next generation will hate you even more.”

— Tom Petty

78. “You get into your late fifties, people start falling like flies all around you. I don’t take life for granted any more. I’m really glad to be here.”

— Tom Petty

79. “Lord, please watch over all these lost children born to chase the hurricane.”

— Tom Petty

80. “There’s a freeway running through the yard.”

— Tom Petty

81. “That’s stupid. You couldn’t pay me to go. I’m not oversimplifying it. That’s what’s going on. I don’t think it would be any fun without the drugs. It’s a drug party.”

— Tom Petty

82. “Gypsies at home watching Jerry Falwell on TV, might mean something to you, it ain’t nothing to me.”

— Tom Petty

83. “But not me, baby, I’ve got you to save me.”

— Tom Petty

84. “If you listen long enough you can hear my skin grow tough love is painful to the touch must be made of stronger stuff.”

— Tom Petty

85. “Bring me a girl, they’re always the best. You put ’em on stage, and you have ’em undress.”

— Tom Petty

86. “Way up in the nosebleeds we watched him on the screen, they’d hung between the billboards so cheaper seats could see.”

— Tom Petty

87. “You’re dealing in magic-it’s this intangible thing that has to happen. And to seek it out too much might not be a good idea. Because, you know, it’s very shy, too. But once you’ve got the essence of them, you can work songs and improve them. You see if there’s a better word, or a better change.”

— Tom Petty

88. “Take back your insurance, baby, nothing is guaranteed. Take back your acid rain, let your TV bleed.”

— Tom Petty

89. “No matter how long you play the guitar, there’s always something else to learn.”

— Tom Petty

90. “I don’t know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I’m at during a particular moment in time.”

— Tom Petty

91. “I don’t believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there.”

— Tom Petty

92. “I got my own way of praying.”

— Tom Petty

93. “You were the one who made things different, you were the one who took me in. You were the one thing I could count on, above all, you were my friend.”

— Tom Petty

94. “I wouldn’t want to get stuck being an oldie-goldie group, but I don’t mind. I think all the trouble you go through these days to go to one of these concerts, I think I owe them a bit of what they came to hear.”

— Tom Petty

95. “There was no use pretending, no magic left to hear, all the music gave me was a craving for lite beer.”

— Tom Petty

96. “We could move catalog, if he’d only die quicker.”

— Tom Petty

97. “If you stretch your imagination, I’ll tell you all a tale, about a time when everything wasn’t up for sale.”

— Tom Petty

98. “If you look around at America, that’s one of its biggest problems is you have corporations that can never be pleased at a profit.”

— Tom Petty

99. “There was rock and roll across the dial, when I think of her it makes me smile.”

— Tom Petty

100. “I’m not exactly a guy who makes new friends easily.”

— Tom Petty