{"author":"Tom Waits","author_id":"Tom+Waits","total_quotes":28,"quotes":[{"text":"You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["listening","people","better "],"id":7413,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["beat-poetry","cynicism","music"],"id":21283,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["ironic","music"],"id":21683,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. 'Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?' they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, 'Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...You're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you.' And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, 'Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest.' So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["humor","individuality","music","musician","non-conformity"],"id":40354,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"Well, it's either kiss me or kill me, that's how I see it.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["kill","kiss"],"id":43862,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"I’ve always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it’s amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["words"],"id":124242,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["myself","kind","like "],"id":181875,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"You know what I really love? The CD players in a car. How when you put the CD right up by the slot, it actually takes it out of your hand, like it's hungry. It pulls it in, and you feel like it wants more silver discs.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["love","know","you "],"id":252749,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["children","songs"],"id":257686,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"},{"text":"Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who's connected with it, the studio's gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that's left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.","author":"Tom Waits","tags":["time","musicians","forward "],"id":262915,"author_id":"Tom+Waits"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":28,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}