Top 100 Tom Petty Quotes
#1. On the music side, I'm a cross between maybe that Texas songwriter and that Tom Petty feel.
Bryan Hayes
#2. I'm looking forward to getting older. I look at people like Peter Gabriel and Sting and even Tom Petty, Don Henley. People that didn't lose it. I'm hopefully going to join that club.
Brandon Flowers
#3. I'm an old rock and roll buff. I love Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty.
Nick Carter
#4. I've always loved Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and I watched the Petty documentary 'Running Down A Dream'. I was directly influenced, it made me want to go write.
Robert Coppola Schwartzman
#5. So I turned on the radio and of course it was a Tom Petty song - is there ever a time you turn on the radio and don't hear a Tom Petty song? - so
Gillian Flynn
#6. Radio used to be dominated by Tom Petty and artists like that. If Tom Petty came out today, he'd be played on country radio - all that stuff would. I think the genre has opened itself up to more styles of country, and I think that's a good thing.
Charles Kelley
#7. Three minutes, so I turned on the radio and of course it was a Tom Petty song - is there ever a time you turn on the radio and don't hear a Tom Petty song? -
Gillian Flynn
#8. I'm a big fan of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, they're my two favorites.
Andrew Shue
#9. I'd always been a fan growing up, and in high school, I was really into Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen.
Bryan Hayes
#10. I've spent most of my life playing with Tom Petty, and he's a damn good songwriter.
Benmont Tench
#11. Nobody went out to pasture, and a lot of people are doing their best work. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Sting are at the top of their game. I mean, Tony Bennett is the coolest guy I ever met! We have to figure out how to break out of this age ghetto.
Bonnie Raitt
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. Even the losers get lucky sometimes!
Tom Petty
#15. You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again.
Tom Petty
#16. 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
#17. I think to be successful you have to work really hard but you also have to have a little bit of luck.
Tom Petty
#18. I'm not any happier anywhere than when I'm in the studio. I'm over the moon about it. It keeps me young, it keeps me feeling like I have some purpose.
Tom Petty
#19. Just wonderin', waitin', worryin' about some silly little things, that just don't add up to nothin'.
Tom Petty
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. Yeah, the world would swing if I were king.
Can I help it if I still dream time to time?
Tom Petty
#23. Good loving is hard to find, you got lucky babe, when I found you.
Tom Petty
#24. 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
#25. But not me, baby, I've got you to save me.
Tom Petty
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. God, it's so painful when something that's so close is still so far out of reach.
Tom Petty
#29. At the end of the day, you're just phonograph records.
Tom Petty
#30. At twilight time the smog makes a rainbow.
Tom Petty
#31. In a world that keeps on pushing me around, I'm gonna stand my ground, and I won't back down ...
Tom Petty
#32. Bring me a girl, they're always the best. You put 'em on stage, and you have 'em undress.
Tom Petty
#33. There's a freeway running through the yard.
Tom Petty
#34. She's a good girl, crazy about Elvis, loves horses, and her boyfriend, too.
Tom Petty
#35. 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
#36. Most magic is a trick, an illusion. But [when The Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show], this was real. Man oh man, was it real.
Tom Petty
#37. When you get older, your health becomes important to you, things start breaking down, you've always got a different ache or pain.
Tom Petty
#38. 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
#39. My mama was a rocker way back in fifty-three, buys them old records that they sell on TV.
Tom Petty
#40. 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
#41. The waiting is the hardest part.
Tom Petty
#42. I love history, doesn't matter what era, I'm fascinated.
Tom Petty
#43. Honey, don't walk out, I'm too drunk to follow.
Tom Petty
#44. It's always been great to be onstage. It's really effortless up there. It's not a lot of work.
Tom Petty
#46. If 20,000 people start to sing, you tend to go along with it.
Tom Petty
#47. Any time you're making a living at what you love to do, you're blessed.
Tom Petty
#48. You were the one who made things different, you were the one who took me in. You were the one thing I could count on, above all, you were my friend.
Tom Petty
#49. I've never had any idea that what I like would resonate with the audience, and I'm pleasantly surprised when it does.
Tom Petty
#50. Eddie waited 'til he finished high school, he went to Hollywood, got a tattoo.
Tom Petty
#51. If you're not getting older, you're dead.
Tom Petty
#52. I think it's important to always offer something new.
Tom Petty
#53. People come, people go
Some grow young, some grow cold
I woke up in between
A memory and a dream
So let's get to the point, let's roll another joint
Let's head on down the road
There's somewhere I gotta go
And you don't know how it feels
You don't know how it feels to be me
Tom Petty
#54. 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
#55. I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings. Coming down is the hardest thing.
Tom Petty
#56. Redemption comes to those who wait, forgiveness is the key.
Tom Petty
#58. 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
#59. Where the sky begins, the horizon ends, despite the best intentions.
Tom Petty
#60. I'm always having fun. Playing is fun. Music is fun.
Tom Petty
#61. There used to be this real sense of community integrity in rock. It has really eroded. Everyone seems to be on their own now.
Tom Petty
#62. I love the music. I'm never, ever tired of playing it.
Tom Petty
#63. It just seems to useless to have to work so hard, and nothing ever really seem to come from it.
Tom Petty
#64. 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
#65. I had to learn a new way of playing. I had to practice a lot, and just find ways around the limitations. So it was a bad idea to break my hand.
You said you were doing a lot of cocaine. Did that affect your songwriting?
No. I think it affected my breaking my hand.
Tom Petty
#66. There was no use pretending, no magic left to hear, all the music gave me was a craving for lite beer.
Tom Petty
#67. You believe what you want to believe
Tom Petty
#68. I developed a problem with authority. Any time that authority was what I interpreted as being unjust, I stood up to it, and that became my personality.
Tom Petty
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. She grew up hard and she grew up fast, in the age of television.
Tom Petty
#72. 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
#73. I'm tired of screwing up. I'm tired of being down. I'm tired of myself. I'm tired of bein' down.
Tom Petty
#74. 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
#75. I've always had a great love for the blues.
Tom Petty
#76. I have never been comfortable being the front man.
Tom Petty
#77. The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.
Tom Petty
#78. I like making money like anybody else, and I'm paid well, but I think there is a point at which you can out-price your audience or your base.
Tom Petty
#79. You get in there, you get the job done and you get the hell out.
Tom Petty
#80. 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
#81. What I've learned about marriage: You need to have each other's back; you have to be a kind of team going through life.
Tom Petty
#82. I'm barely prolific and incredibly lazy.
Tom Petty
#83. 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
#84. He don't wanna change, what don't need to change.
Tom Petty
#85. Every verse a diamond, every chorus gold, the sound was my salvation. It was only everything, before money became king.
Tom Petty
#86. 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
#87. I would never put my songs in a commercial.
Tom Petty
#88. Take back your insurance, baby, nothing is guaranteed. Take back your acid rain, let your TV bleed.
Tom Petty
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. I've got a room at the top of the world tonight. I can see everything tonight.
Tom Petty
#92. 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
#93. If you stretch your imagination, I'll tell you all a tale, about a time when everything wasn't up for sale.
Tom Petty
#94. You need eagles wings to get over things that make no sense in this world.
Tom Petty
#95. If you look around at America, that's one of its biggest problems is you have corporations that can never be pleased at a profit.
Tom Petty
#96. Excuse me if I have/some place in my mind/where I go time to time.
Tom Petty
#97. No matter how long you play the guitar, there's always something else to learn.
Tom Petty
#98. 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
#99. The first time I tried to write was when I was 14, after I got an electric guitar. I put a song together, and it wasn't that bad! The writing came natural to me.
Tom Petty
#100. Time to move on, time to get going. What lies ahead I have no way of knowing. But under my feet, baby, grass is growing.
Tom Petty
