“Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.”

“Let me fall out of the window/With confetti in my hair”

“There’s nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face… I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else’s. That’s a difficult statement to live up to, but then I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.”

“The higher that the monkey can climb, the more he shows his tail.Call no man happy till he dies, there's no milk at the bottom of the pail.God builds a church and the devil builds a chapel, like the thistles that are growing 'round the trunk of a tree.All the good in the world you could put inside a thimble, and still have room for you and me.If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but it always coming roaring back again.Misery's the river of the world, misery's the river of the world.Everybody row, everybody row;misery's the river of the world.”

“And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget that history puts a saint in every dream.”

“Never have your wallet with you onstage. It's bad luck. You shouldn't play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.Tom Waits (to me, about 1986 or so)”

“All that you've loved is all you own”