Top 40 Waits Quotes

Biggest musical influences would be people like Nina Simone and Tom Waits. A huge amount of writers like Leslie Feist and Paul Simon.

Because of the womb being a central phenomenon in the feminine body, the whole psychology of woman differs: she is non-aggressive, non-inquiring, non-questioning, non-doubting, because all of those things are part of aggression. She will not take the initiative; she simply waits – and she can wait infinitely.

I’ve covered so much Tom Waits. He’s one of my favorite writers. I have a real affinity to how he writes.

I’m a fan of music, some rock music. But I like many types of music. But I suppose a kind of longstanding love of specific bands would be Radiohead, Wilco, Neil Young, Tom Waits, REM.

I can count on one hand the people who are legendary in my book, and Tom Waits is certainly right at the top. It’s funny, though: When I tell people that I like Tom’s music, it surprises them.

You will be hard pressed to read another book that understands you as well as ‘Leaves of Grass’ does. It was made for you in the way that the constellations were made for you. It understands and makes space for your doubts, your love, the guilt and passions of your life and waits for you.

Everybody in this league waits on an opportunity when you don’t play the starter minutes, when you don’t play the type of minutes you want. And with each given opportunity, you got to be ready to come out and perform.

I’m always sad when Dad doesn’t like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn’t say a word – it’s only if he’s critical that he bothers to call.

What I look for in music is artistry, sincerity, and simplicity, and Tom Waits has all of that. I want to make a connection to the creator.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

I was never academically driven in English, but, again, Tom Waits is a perfect example of an influence. He writes so immaculately and paints so perfectly a world and the characters within it. There are writers like that who are my influences: vivid and gifted storytellers.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

In Eastern Europe, the past is not only always hovering over the present, it is not even passed. It waits, like some malevolent caged beast, ready at any moment to escape and bring back all the horrors.

I have a piano in my kitchen. I read a great biography about Tom Waits that said that he had a piano in his kitchen; he had a grand piano in his kitchen. And I thought, ‘Well, if Tom Waits has one, then I must.’

My friend Danny Clinch, who’s a photographer, gave me a big, signed, numbered print of a photo he took of Eddie Vedder in Seattle. It’s hung in my writing room where I have posters of writers that inspire me. They’re all pointing at me. Tom Waits is like, ‘Don’t sell out!’

In a pine tree behind me, an eagle waits out the rain, hunched into himself, brooding. Crows squabble, a murder chasing a raven. Seals cruise the lines of fishing nets bobbing in the water, hoping for an easy meal, the tender bellies of salmon.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential – the imagination.

There’s a lot of talent in South Central L.A., in Compton and Long Beach and Watts, and the city north of Pico pretty much sits back and waits for that talent to emerge and then steps in.

A bully waits until they are in the ascendancy to pounce on people.

The first time I heard Tom Waits, it was like everything just flipped. It was just this fascination with him. My cousin showed me ‘Small Change,’ and I just couldn’t get over that this was a white guy singing.

There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the make the first move – and he, in turn, waits for you.

Ours is a God who waits. So who are we not to?

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

Men may know many things by seeing; but no prophet can see before the event, nor what end waits for him.

To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light.

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.

The government simply waits for farmers to grow their crops – nine months of growing grapes, then two to three weeks of drying them in the sun. Then it takes away a part of that crop and stores it in warehouses around California.

I had a great conversation with Tom Waits, of all people.

I’m the girl that waits for the director to say, ‘I like that,’ or ‘Can you boost it up?,’ or ‘Can you pull it down?’ I’m that kind of actor. I started in theater, so that’s the feedback that I’m accustomed to. It’s the feedback that I really thrive off of.

I know it sounds weird, but the kind of music I write isn’t the kind of music that I listen to, which is quite underground, left-of-centre stuff like PJ Harvey and Tom Waits.

Applause waits on success.

We live trapped, between the churned-up and examined past and a future that waits for our work.

In this respect early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting for a big trip to an unknown destination. The chief difference is that youth waits for the morning limited and age waits for the night train.

I’ve been a total Tom Waits dork for a long, long time.

The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We’re growing old. It’s getting late.

Ah, man, if I could ever hook up with Tom Waits, I’d be the happiest camper in Yellowstone, alright? That’s the one guy.

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.

I rejected most of the folk I was exposed to in the Seventies. I came around later to Tom Waits, some parts of Jim Croce, and a lot of Cat Stevens.

Mayweather waits for you to make a mistake. He plays a similar game to me.