Tom Waits

Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs.

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

I don't like the stigma that comes with being called a poet . . . So I call what I'm doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.

It's a battered old suitcase and a hotel someplace and a wound that will never heal.

All that you've loved is all you own

When the weather's rough and it's whiskey in the rain it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane.

Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah,I drunk me a river since you tore me apart