Tom Verlaine Quotes

Quotes about:

• When I think of 'influence', I think of 'influenza', like somebody's picked up a germ.

  Tom Verlaine

  Thinking, Germs, Influence

  11 Copy quote

• I've got a quote for you, a good quote to describe Television...In madness there is order.

  Tom Verlaine

  Order, Television, Madness

  7 Copy quote

• I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live.

  Tom Verlaine

  Thinking, Way To Live, Invisible

  8 Copy quote

• I always like junkyards. All this metal piled up - they're filled with pathos, those places. Much more pathos than most of the music I've heard. You look at it, and there's more feeling, even though it's depressing, than there is in a lot of music I hear these days. A junkyard is what it is, whereas listening to a record by, say, Styx, is something else.

  Tom Verlaine

  Depressing, Feelings, Listening

  7 Copy quote

• Practice? I never practice. I just write songs and take solos.

  Tom Verlaine

  Song, Writing, Practice

  8 Copy quote

• I don't think Marquee Moon was so good, y'know? Just another record. First records everybody likes a lot.

  Tom Verlaine

  Moon, Thinking, Records

  4 Copy quote

• You can't get so interested in just making sounds. The point of it all is some kind of expression.

  Tom Verlaine

  Expression, Sound, Kind

  9 Copy quote

• I recently realized that Television has influenced a lot of English bands. Echo and the Bunnymen, U2, Teardrop Explodes - it's obvious what they've listened to and what they're going for. When I was sixteen I listened to Yardbirds records and thought, "God, this is great." It's gratifying to think that people listened to Television albums and felt the same.

  Tom Verlaine

  Thinking, Echoes, People

  4 Copy quote

• Everybody's out trying to be commercial. I'm not trying to be anything, really.

  Tom Verlaine

  Trying

  8 Copy quote

• I'm not even sure who my audience is.

  Tom Verlaine

  Audience

  7 Copy quote

• I have a real soft spot for flying saucer songs and Frenkenstein songs. When I was a kid the first record I ever really liked was called "The Mummy", and the flip-side was called "The Beat Generation" which Richard Hell later re-wrote as "The Blank Generation". I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever heard. I didn't like Elvis much then, but I was very young. When I was a kid I used to play that monster all the time!

  Tom Verlaine

  Song, Real, Kids

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think anybody thinks about their past much, unless they're in a mental institution.

  Tom Verlaine

  Past, Thinking, Institutions

  4 Copy quote

• In Old English they don't say I had a dream, but there's another usage of the word - "life is but a dream," to be corny about it. It's implied with eyes wide open, rather than asleep. But I'm not a philosopher to explain myself. I wish I could. Maybe that's why I'm a musician.

  Tom Verlaine

  Dream, Eye, Wish

  7 Copy quote

• I told somebody in Europe I was 43. I never tell my true age. It's ridiculous that people ask. The press doesn't deserve anything but lies.

  Tom Verlaine

  Lying, Europe, People

  4 Copy quote

• Places like Belgium and the south of France, Sweden and Copenhagen are really alive. They really love rock 'n' roll, they really respond.

  Tom Verlaine

  Rocks, Alive, Sweden

  7 Copy quote

• I'm not a clown but I'm not an academic either.

  Tom Verlaine

  Academic, Clown

  4 Copy quote

• Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was.

  Tom Verlaine

  Creating, Style, Sake

  4 Copy quote

• Boogie! I hate boogie, God, I mean, not the Chicago boogie like Willie Dixon or Howlin' Wolf, but all those awful white bands.

  Tom Verlaine

  Hate, Mean, White

  4 Copy quote

• There were a lot of things I listened to, but so-called pop music never killed me, you know, the type of stuff that always seems to make it on the radio. The whole radio thing seems so... it's like they've accepted the whole "new wave" thing only because this kind of pop element came into it. In Europe they really love emotion, but here it's like, "let's stay away from it because we might cry or something".

  Tom Verlaine

  Europe, Elements, Radio

  7 Copy quote

• The first time I met Patti Smith was in a laundromat. We knew some of the same people, including Richard Hell.

  Tom Verlaine

  People, Firsts, Hell

  85 Copy quote

• I can't remember ever being really bored. I find life very interesting, actually. I think some other musicians are always looking for something to give them an idea, but I find I have to reject 90 percent of my ideas because they don't live up to some self-imposed standard. That's also why I don't make a record once a year. I throw so many things out, and I have to have something to say.

  Tom Verlaine

  Thinking, Self, Years

  4 Copy quote

• People ask me this a lot, what a song's about.... I do think analyzing a song can be interesting, although it doesn't necessarily get to the point. It's a whole other side activity. I do like making a thing into pictures. If I get an abstract idea and all the words in it don't represent tangible things, I might try to take the idea and make it into a picture, create a little scene there, an image.

  Tom Verlaine

  Song, Thinking, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• It's like first grade where you make all your mistakes and people see it and yet some people see that there's something there that's really valuable. That's the way it went for more than 2 years almost 3 years of playing.

  Tom Verlaine

  Mistake, Years, People

  8 Copy quote

• Johnny Jewel is how people were maybe two hundred years ago. Back then, when people got up in the morning, they knew what they had to do to get through the day - there were 100% less decisions. Nowadays, we have to decide what we want to buy in grocery stores, what job to take, what work to do. But not Johnny. For him, it's all right there - it's a freer state, and that's what my music is looking for... ... To understand Johnny, you should think of William Blake. He was the same kinda guy.

  Tom Verlaine

  Morning, Jobs, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• I just don't like people coming up to me and saying something. It immediately makes you become insincere. There is no way you can react to it sincerely.

  Tom Verlaine

  People, Way, Sincerely

  18 Copy quote

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