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.
Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that what we perceive as evil may often be a misinterpretation of a higher power's actions due to our limited understanding.
Tom Waits' quote reflects on the duality of good and evil, proposing that our perceptions of devilish acts might stem from the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the divine. By suggesting that 'there ain't no devil,' Waits implies that the complexities of life can distort our view of morality, making us question the intentions behind seemingly malevolent actions. This viewpoint challenges us to consider a broader perspective on existence and the nature of suffering and joy.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophical discussion on morality, one might mention this quote to illustrate the complexity of good and evil.
More from Tom Waits
All quotes βIf you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment.
I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.
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.
My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
Now its raining its pouring the old man is snoring now I lay me down to sleep I hear the sirens in the street all my dreams are made of chrome I have no way to get back home Iβd rather die before I wake like Marilyn Monroe and throw my dreams out in the street and the rain make βem grow
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In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.
An armed society is a polite society.
When humans invented material inequality, they came up with a way of subjugating the low-ranking like nothing ever seen before in the primate world.
Silence came before creation, and the heavens were spread without a word
I hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is a Democrat -- and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them.
No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.