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

Tom Waits Music See all quotes by Tom Waits →

React to this quote

More by Tom Waits

See all

“Tom Waits Library - a compendium of information about Tom Waits and his works”

“How do the angels get to sleep / When the Devil leaves his porch light on?”

“I don't have a drinking problem ‘cept when I can't get a drink.”

“If I exorcise my devils, well, my angels may leave too.”

“What's he building in there? We have a right to know.”

“I collaborate with my wife on the songs, and every aspect of it, really— composing, and arranging, and recording, all that business. We have a rhythm and a way of working it. It's kind of like borrowing the same ten bucks from somebody over and over again. But when you live together, it makes it a lot easier, the pay back.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Technically, he was the best singer that appeared, I'm not being too liberal about this if I say, in two decades. I started to play Grace constantly, and the more I listened to the album, the more I h…"

— Jeff Buckley

Music1966–1997

#philosophy

"omeone who doesn’t know a country’s history is bound to chuckle at the things its people worry about."

— Brian Reynolds Myers

Education1963

#knowledge

"Every man and every woman is a star."

— Aleister Crowley

Literature1875–1947

#gender

"goes back to the ball he hit in Wrigley Field, Chicago. He rates this one No. 1 for distance, perhaps 600 feet. Clemente, himself, paced off the distance from the centerfield wall to the scoreboard ri…"

— Roberto Clemente

Psychology1934–1972

#change