Tom Waits Writing Quotations

When you're writing‚ you're conjuring. It's a ritual‚ and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room.

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don't want to live any other way.

Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder.

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

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.

I like writing melody without an instrument. It's just so - it's more like the choreography of a bee; you just go.

I like vocal word stuff. But I don't always write with an instrument, I usually write a capella. It's more like drawing in the air with your fingers. It's closest to the choreography of a bee. You're freer.

You just write and you don't try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.

Songs are pretty easy. They are small, they are modular, they are about as big as a bagel. They are easy to build. Films are overwhelming in their magnitude and scope. By comparison, a lot of film directors wish they were writing songs because you can do it while getting your hair cut.