Top 100 Tom Petty Quotes
#1. I think sometimes maybe you're going to connect with the audience more than others, but the journey is about getting all there is to get out of this group of people.
Tom Petty
#2. If you listen long enough you can hear my skin grow tough love is painful to the touch must be made of stronger stuff.
Tom Petty
#3. The energy of the crowd is insane. Twenty thousand people. It's the biggest jolt of adrenaline. It's very hard to explain. You know the old story about the woman lifting the car off her kid? It's in that realm. You can actually hurt yourself and not know it.
Tom Petty
#4. I think to be successful you have to work really hard but you also have to have a little bit of luck.
Tom Petty
#5. Just wonderin', waitin', worryin' about some silly little things, that just don't add up to nothin'.
Tom Petty
#6. Making a record? You've got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it's the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you're already 90% there. I always tell young people it's all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.
Tom Petty
#7. I should have known right then it was too good to last, God, it's such a drag when you're livin' in the past
Tom Petty
#8. Yeah, the world would swing if I were king.
Can I help it if I still dream time to time?
Tom Petty
#9. Good loving is hard to find, you got lucky babe, when I found you.
Tom Petty
#10. I don't think it's a good attitude in your life to feel that you have to be rich to have self-esteem.
Tom Petty
#11. But not me, baby, I've got you to save me.
Tom Petty
#12. I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there.
Tom Petty
#13. I'm actually better on the guitar than when I started, I think, because I've had so much time with it and I still practice and I love to do it and I love to sing.
Tom Petty
#14. God, it's so painful when something that's so close is still so far out of reach.
Tom Petty
#15. At the end of the day, you're just phonograph records.
Tom Petty
#16. At twilight time the smog makes a rainbow.
Tom Petty
#17. She's a good girl, crazy about Elvis, loves horses, and her boyfriend, too.
Tom Petty
#18. I don't understand the ones that have no sense of hope and invest in hate. That's not gonna work out, you know? It's a waste of your time!
Tom Petty
#19. When you kill somebody's little sister with a missile, he's going to hate you forever. And the next generation will hate you even more.
Tom Petty
#20. My mama was a rocker way back in fifty-three, buys them old records that they sell on TV.
Tom Petty
#21. I don't treat the band like I'm above them or that they're a hired hand for me. We've never worked that way. So I'm a team player. I would be very uncomfortable having to do this alone.
Tom Petty
#22. Honey, don't walk out, I'm too drunk to follow.
Tom Petty
#23. If 20,000 people start to sing, you tend to go along with it.
Tom Petty
#24. Any time you're making a living at what you love to do, you're blessed.
Tom Petty
#25. Eddie waited 'til he finished high school, he went to Hollywood, got a tattoo.
Tom Petty
#26. I don't know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I'm at during a particular moment in time.
Tom Petty
#27. Redemption comes to those who wait, forgiveness is the key.
Tom Petty
#29. The truth is that if you play on TV there is always a sponsor. There is no way around it. I've already passed on so much money I don't worry about it anymore.
Tom Petty
#30. Where the sky begins, the horizon ends, despite the best intentions.
Tom Petty
#31. I'm always having fun. Playing is fun. Music is fun.
Tom Petty
#32. I love the music. I'm never, ever tired of playing it.
Tom Petty
#33. It just seems to useless to have to work so hard, and nothing ever really seem to come from it.
Tom Petty
#34. You belong among the wildflowers You belong in a boat out at sea You belong with your love on your arm You belong somewhere you feel free
Tom Petty
#35. There was no use pretending, no magic left to hear, all the music gave me was a craving for lite beer.
Tom Petty
#36. It's funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can't afford the music.
Tom Petty
#37. I started playing the bass because nobody else would play the bass, and then I got bumped up into singing because no one else really wanted to sing. So I learned how to sing and I wrote the songs, so I tended to get the most attention.
Tom Petty
#38. She grew up hard and she grew up fast, in the age of television.
Tom Petty
#39. Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There's not some trick involved with it. It's pure and it's real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things.
Tom Petty
#40. I always tell my kids, "Find something that you love and within that you'll find some job that you can do and you'll always be happy. You'll go to a job that you want to go to."
Tom Petty
#41. I've always had a great love for the blues.
Tom Petty
#42. I have never been comfortable being the front man.
Tom Petty
#43. I'm more interested in what I'm going to leave behind me than in making a big hit record. I've refined what I do for a long time. If getting better at it means it goes over the heads of those who only wanted to party, then so be it.
Tom Petty
#44. I'm barely prolific and incredibly lazy.
Tom Petty
#45. I'm certainly not a Robin Hood, I'm not that way. I don't want to come through, burn everybody for $200 a ticket and then they can't afford to come see me again. Plus, I just don't think it's right. I don't think we need that much money. I just do what seems like the logical thing to do.
Tom Petty
#46. He don't wanna change, what don't need to change.
Tom Petty
#47. Every verse a diamond, every chorus gold, the sound was my salvation. It was only everything, before money became king.
Tom Petty
#48. You get into your late fifties, people start falling like flies all around you. I don't take life for granted any more. I'm really glad to be here.
Tom Petty
#49. I would never put my songs in a commercial.
Tom Petty
#50. Take back your insurance, baby, nothing is guaranteed. Take back your acid rain, let your TV bleed.
Tom Petty
#51. The great thing about the Wilburys was that none of us had to take the heat by ourselves. I was just a member of the band. Nobody felt like he was above anybody else. We had such a good time.
Tom Petty
#52. How 'bout a cheer for all those bad girls?
And all those boys that play that rock and roll?
They love it like you love Jesus,
It does the same thing to their souls.
Tom Petty
#53. It's very easy to be cynical about the hall of fame. But on the other hand, it's really a beautiful thing for someone like me. I dedicated my entire life to this music.
Tom Petty
#54. If you stretch your imagination, I'll tell you all a tale, about a time when everything wasn't up for sale.
Tom Petty
#55. You need eagles wings to get over things that make no sense in this world.
Tom Petty
#56. Excuse me if I have/some place in my mind/where I go time to time.
Tom Petty
#57. No matter how long you play the guitar, there's always something else to learn.
Tom Petty
#58. You spend your life dreaming, running 'round in a trance, You hang out forever and still miss the dance, And if you get lucky, you might find someone, To help you get over the pain that will come.
Tom Petty
#59. Hey hey hey
I was born a rebel
Down in Dixie on a Sunday morning
Yeah, with one foot in the grave
And one foot on the pedal
I was born a rebel, born a rebel
Tom Petty
#60. I'm not exactly a guy who makes new friends easily.
Tom Petty
#61. Oh yeah, alright, take it easy baby, make it last all night. She was an American Girl.
Tom Petty
#62. Running down a dream ... working on a mystery ... going wherever it leads ...
Tom Petty
#63. I have turned down a lot of money for things that would have made me feel cheesy.
Tom Petty
#64. I like a good beer. Of course, I'll drink a bad one too. Let no person thirst for lack of real ale! Thank god for long-necked bottles, the angel's remedy.
Tom Petty
#65. Some grow young, some grow cold ...
Tom Petty
#66. Gonna wind it up on my guitar. Gonna make that silver sing.
Tom Petty
#67. We could move catalog, if he'd only die quicker.
Tom Petty
#68. I want to be successful. Not just money. Just making a successful record and a successful show. I could feel successful without selling a million records.
Tom Petty
#69. Sometimes life, will get you down, break your heart, steal your crown.
Tom Petty
#71. TV does not care about you or what happens to you. It's downright bad for your health now, and that's not a far-out concept. I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health.
Tom Petty
#72. I think for it to be hip to be idealistic is weird, you know? I mean, even all the best rebels to me, had some sense of hope in them.
Tom Petty
#74. When I was a kid, we didn't have any blues stations. I never heard Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters or any of those people until the Stones had come along, and I took it upon myself to find out who these people were that they were covering.
Tom Petty
#75. We don't really make bad records, though some people might like some more than others. And we have never really done a bad show. So I think in a way maybe we've been taken for granted.
Tom Petty
#76. I'm not trying to be cool. I have a problem with lights. I have one eye that's become super-sensitive to lighting, so I do wear sunglasses quite a bit.
Tom Petty
#77. Well I won't back down
No I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down
Tom Petty
#78. I'm so tired of being tired. Sure as night will follow day most things I worry about will never happen anyway.
Tom Petty
#79. Yeah and it's over before you know it
It all goes by so fast
Yeah the bad nights take forever
And the good nights don't ever seem to last
Tom Petty
#80. I always liked the idea of the guitar - because cowboys played the guitar.
Tom Petty
#81. most things I worry 'bout never happen anyway
Tom Petty
#82. I tend to write on an acoustic guitar or the piano. I have kind of a rule: if I can't sit down and play this and get the song over, I don't take it to the band, because most any good song, you can sit down and deliver it with a piano or a guitar.
Tom Petty
#83. There goes your freedom of choice, there goes the last human voice.
Tom Petty
#84. Whatever you're looking for, don't come around here no more.
Tom Petty
#85. As we celebrate mediocrity, all the boys upstairs want to see. How much you'll pay for what you used to get for free.
Tom Petty
#86. He [George Harrison] told me he really, really admired John [Lennon]. He probably wanted John's acceptance pretty bad, you know?
Tom Petty
#87. George Harrison was the kind of guy who wasn't going to leave until he hugged you for five minutes and told you how much he loved you.
Tom Petty
#88. Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have kicked you around some. Tell me, why you want to lay there, revel in your abandon?
Tom Petty
#89. I never could have dreamed that her heart was so wicked, but I keep coming back because it's so hard to kick it.
Tom Petty
#90. There was rock and roll across the dial, when I think of her it makes me smile.
Tom Petty
#91. I think television's become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television.
Tom Petty
#92. We haven't always been boy scouts, but we never lost sight of the music, Let me remind you that this ain't the end.
Tom Petty
#93. I'm not interested in the TV much. I quit watching the news a couple years ago and my outlook on life has gotten a whole lot better.
Tom Petty
#94. You're dealing in magic-it's this intangible thing that has to happen. And to seek it out too much might not be a good idea. Because, you know, it's very shy, too. But once you've got the essence of them, you can work songs and improve them. You see if there's a better word, or a better change.
Tom Petty
#95. Buy me a drink, sing me a song; take me as I come, cause I can't stay long.
Tom Petty
#96. So I started out for God knows where.
I guess I'll know when I get there.
Tom Petty
#97. I wouldn't want to get stuck being an oldie-goldie group, but I don't mind. I think all the trouble you go through these days to go to one of these concerts, I think I owe them a bit of what they came to hear.
Tom Petty
#98. Last dance with Mary Jane
One more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin' in and I'm
Tired of this town again
Tom Petty
#99. Do something you really like, and hopefully it pays the rent. As far as I'm concerned, that's success.
Tom Petty
#100. Most things I worry about never happen anyway.
Tom Petty
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