Top 200 Tom Waits Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”

— Tom Waits

2. “Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me – choke those little bad days. Choke ’em down to nothing.”

— Tom Waits

3. “I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left.”

— Tom Waits

4. “We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.”

— Tom Waits

5. “I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

— Tom Waits

Featured in: Music Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Sorrow Quotes

6. “The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”

— Tom Waits

Featured in: Quality Quotes, Suffering Quotes

7. “There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby.”

— Tom Waits

8. “A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.”

— Tom Waits

9. “If you get far enough away you’ll be on your way back home.”

— Tom Waits

10. “Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just god when he’s drunk.”

— Tom Waits

11. “You’re my North Star when I’m lost and feeling blue.”

— Tom Waits

12. “The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

— Tom Waits

13. “I think I have an adrenaline addiction, no question about that.”

— Tom Waits

14. “Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.”

— Tom Waits

15. “Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.”

— Tom Waits

16. “All that you’ve loved is all you own.”

— Tom Waits

17. “It’s hard to win when you always lose.”

— Tom Waits

18. “We are all just monkeys with money and guns.”

— Tom Waits

19. “The beginning of it starts at the end.”

— Tom Waits

20. “The piano has been drinking, not me.”

— Tom Waits

21. “Most people don’t care if you’re telling them the truth or if you’re telling them a lie, as long as they’re entertained by it.”

— Tom Waits

22. “A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.”

— Tom Waits

23. “The devil knows the Bible like the back of his hand.”

— Tom Waits

24. “Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air.”

— Tom Waits

25. “Well, it’s either kiss me or kill me, that’s how I see it.”

— Tom Waits

26. “I’m so horny the crack of dawn better watch out.”

— Tom Waits

27. “The ocean doesn’t want me today, But I’ll come back tomorrow to play. The riptide is waging And the life guard’s away But the ocean doesn’t want me today.”

— Tom Waits

28. “Their memory’s like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can’t remember Tell the things you can’t forget that History puts a saint in every dream.”

— Tom Waits

29. “There’s no prayer like desire.”

— Tom Waits

30. “The Universe is making music all the time.”

— Tom Waits

31. “You’re innocent when you dream.”

— Tom Waits

32. “I’ve never met anyone who made it with a chick because they owned a Tom Waits album. I’ve got all three, and it’s never helped me.”

— Tom Waits

33. “I’m just trying to make a buck like everyone else.”

— Tom Waits

34. “God’s away, God’s away, God’s away on business. Business!”

— Tom Waits

35. “I worry about a lot of things, but I don’t worry about achievements. I worry primarily about whether there are nightclubs in Heaven.”

— Tom Waits

36. “If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man.”

— Tom Waits

37. “It’s very hard to stop doing things you’re used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.”

— Tom Waits

38. “I’ve lost my equilibrium, my car keys, and my pride.”

— Tom Waits

39. “All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes.”

— Tom Waits

40. “You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you.”

— Tom Waits

41. “When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.”

— Tom Waits

42. “I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.”

— Tom Waits

43. “Bill Hicks – blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built.”

— Tom Waits

44. “You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her.”

— Tom Waits

45. “She’s got the whole dark forest living inside of her.”

— Tom Waits

46. “Sing me a rainbow. Steal me a dream.”

— Tom Waits

47. “If you walk with Jesus, he’s gonna save your soul. You gotta keep the devil way down in the hole. He’s got the fire and the fury at his command.”

— Tom Waits

48. “The dog won’t bite if you beat Him with a bone.”

— Tom Waits

49. “It was a hubba, hubba, ding dang, baby you are just everythang.”

— Tom Waits

50. “It’s hard to play with a bagpipe player. It’s like an exotic bird. I love the sound, it’s like strangling a goose.”

— Tom Waits