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.

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.

Tom Waits Quotes