1. “Do something you really like, and hopefully it pays the rent. As far as I’m concerned, that’s success.” – Tom Petty
2. “I got my own way of praying.” – Tom Petty
3. “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
4. “Buy me a drink, sing me a song; take me as I come, cause I can’t stay long.” – Tom Petty
5. “You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down.” – Tom Petty
6. “Honey, don’t walk out, I’m too drunk to follow.” – Tom Petty
7. “He don’t wanna change, what don’t need to change.” – Tom Petty
8. “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
9. “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
10. “I can’t crawl any further. You never crawled for me.” – Tom Petty
11. “It’s sort of hope amongst the ruins, I think. To me, we’re all in the great wide open. I think life is pretty wild; I really want to like the world, but at the same time I have to write about what I see.” – Tom Petty
12. “If you’re phony, they will feel it in the farthest row of the arena. You have to really care. And you have to make yourself care time and time again.” – Tom Petty
13. “Sometimes life, will get you down, break your heart, steal your crown.” – Tom Petty
14. “I’m not exactly a guy who makes new friends easily.” – Tom Petty
15. “I think if I’d quit years ago, I’d never have known what I was capable of doing.” – Tom Petty
16. “So I started out for God knows where. I guess I’ll know when I get there.” – Tom Petty
17. “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
18. “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
19. “If you stretch your imagination, I’ll tell you all a tale, about a time when everything wasn’t up for sale.” – Tom Petty
20. “I have never been comfortable being the front man.” – Tom Petty
21. “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
22. “Any time you’re making a living at what you love to do, you’re blessed.” – Tom Petty
23. “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
24. “I remember things being more clearer, at one time things were more real.” – Tom Petty
25. “At the end of the day, you’re just phonograph records.” – Tom Petty
26. “Bring me a girl, they’re always the best. You put ’em on stage, and you have ’em undress.” – Tom Petty
27. “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
28. “I’ve always had a great love for the blues.” – Tom Petty
29. “I’ve learned one thing, and that’s to quit worrying about stupid things.” – Tom Petty
30. “I love the music. I’m never, ever tired of playing it.” – Tom Petty
31. “Excuse me if I have/some place in my mind/where I go time to time.” – Tom Petty
32. “Baby even the losers get lucky sometimes.” – Tom Petty
33. “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
34. “It’s the only true magic I know. It’s not pulling a rabbit out of a hat; it’s real. It’s your soul floating out to theirs.” – Tom Petty
35. “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
36. “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.” – Tom Petty
37. “I don’t believe in lawsuits much. I think there are enough frivolous lawsuits in this country without people fighting over pop songs.” – Tom Petty
38. “That’s stupid. You couldn’t pay me to go. I’m not oversimplifying it. That’s what’s going on. I don’t think it would be any fun without the drugs. It’s a drug party.” – Tom Petty
39. “If you’re not getting older, you’re dead.” – Tom Petty
40. “Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks. Some doors are opened, some roads are blocked. Sundowns are golden, then fade away. And if I never do nothing, I’ll get you back someday.” – Tom Petty
41. “Every verse a diamond, every chorus gold, the sound was my salvation. It was only everything, before money became king.” – Tom Petty
42. “I think it’s important to always offer something new.” – Tom Petty
43. “And the days went by like paper in the wind. Everything changed, then changed again. It’s hard to find a friend. It’s hard to find a friend.” – Tom Petty
44. “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
45. “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
46. “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
47. “Music is probably the one 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
48. “The poison came in liquid, she was naked all the time.” – Tom Petty
49. “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
50. “I would never put my songs in a commercial.” – Tom Petty
51. “The only good thing about getting older is you get smart enough to avoid unnecessary problems. You know what’s worth spending time on and what’s not. If I had known that at 20, life would have been so much easier, but you have to experience all these things so you figure out how to find your way through the woods.” – Tom Petty
52. “Let’s get to the point Let’s roll another joint.” – Tom Petty
53. “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
54. “I have turned down a lot of money for things that would have made me feel cheesy.” – Tom Petty
55. “You believe what you want to believe. You see, you don’t have to live like a refugee.” – Tom Petty
56. “A rebel without a clue.” – Tom Petty
57. “Go after what you really love and find a way to make that work for you, and then you’ll be a happy person.” – Tom Petty
58. “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
59. “Songwriting ability is a gift. After a while, you come to realize, ‘I’ve really been blessed. I can write these things and it makes me happy, and it makes millions of people happy.’” – Tom Petty
60. “The waiting is the hardest part, every day you get one more yard. You take it on faith, you take it to the heart, the waiting is the hardest part.” – Tom Petty
61. “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
62. “Some grow young, some grow cold…” – Tom Petty
63. “I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings. Coming down is the hardest thing.” – Tom Petty
64. “Music really isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s all about people relating to each other and doing something that’s really from the soul. It must come from the soul.” – Tom Petty
65. “I’ll stand my ground and I won’t back down…” – Tom Petty
66. “She grew up hard and she grew up fast, in the age of television.” – Tom Petty
67. “Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks.” – Tom Petty
68. “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
69. “I’ve got a room at the top of the world tonight. I can see everything tonight.” – Tom Petty
70. “I think to be successful you have to work really hard but you also have to have a little bit of luck.” – Tom Petty
71. “Well I don’t know but I’ve been told, you never slow down, you never grow old.” – Tom Petty
72. “Redemption comes to those who wait, forgiveness is the key.” – Tom Petty
73. “The music has to be affordable. It’s the common man that keeps it going, and if you price it out of his realm, it becomes a thing of the elite.” – Tom Petty
74. “I got just one life in a world that keeps on pushin’ me around. But I stand my ground and I won’t back down.” – Tom Petty
75. “I’m always having fun. Playing is fun. Music is fun.” – Tom Petty
76. “There’s a freeway running through the yard.” – Tom Petty
77. “You belong somewhere you feel free.” – Tom Petty
78. “I’m barely prolific and incredibly lazy.” – Tom Petty
79. “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
80. “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
81. “Oh yeah, alright, take it easy baby, make it last all night. She was an American Girl.” – Tom Petty
82. “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
83. “Way up in the nosebleeds we watched him on the screen, they’d hung between the billboards so cheaper seats could see.” – Tom Petty
84. “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
85. “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
86. “Where the sky begins, the horizon ends, despite the best intentions.” – Tom Petty
87. “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
88. “If you don’t run, you rust.” – Tom Petty
89. “You get in there, you get the job done and you get the hell out.” – Tom Petty
90. “Gonna wind it up on my guitar. Gonna make that silver sing.” – Tom Petty
91. “I ain’t really sure, but it seems I remember the good times.” – Tom Petty
92. “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
93. “Even the losers get lucky sometimes!” – Tom Petty
94. “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
95. “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
96. “I love history, doesn’t matter what era, I’m fascinated.” – Tom Petty
97. “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
98. “I like to be an optimist, but I like to be a realist, too.” – Tom Petty
99. “I’m so tired of being tired. Sure as night will follow day most things I worry about will never happen anyway.” – Tom Petty
100. “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
101. “Good loving is hard to find, you got lucky babe, when I found you.” – Tom Petty
102. “I’ll stand my ground and I won’t back down…” – Tom Petty
103. “Sometimes life, will get you down, break your heart, steal your crown.” – Tom Petty