Smoky-voiced singer songwriter. Experimental musician and cult icon. There are many ways to describe Tom Waits, but perhaps the most apt one is enigmatic: a mystery wrapped in a riddle.

Tom Waits is as much of a character created for his fans as it is a real man, out of time and place and an ongoing experiment in performance art.

He is potentially violent if he thinks someone is fucking with him, but he is gentle and kind too.

Artists, good ones, including novelists, are special types of manic depressives …

… weird enough to conceive of things that do not occur to normal people

… but sane enough to complete them in a coherent manner, rather than ending up doing nothing but fighting their way out of a straitjacket so they can wash their hands again.

Reality is for people who can not face drugs. If something is likely to destabilize you, stay the hell away from it. – Tom Waits

I do not do drugs. I am drugs. If you already have the right stew in the brain, there is no need to add to it. And if you do not have the talent and dedication, there is no pill, no white powder, whatever, that is going to make one’s simple mind into a genius mind. – Salvador Dali