Nick cave quotes

I think there is a certain perversity in my music in that I continue, you know, to eat at the same ball of vomit year after year.

The songs that I like are the ones that you can't visualize, that are just cries from the heart - those very straight, direct songs that make rock & roll music so wonderful.

I am not interested in anything that doesn't have a genuine heart to it. You've got to have soul in the hole. If that isn't there, I don't see the point.

But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .

I don't really care who collects my work, black, white, red, yellow. You have to also be consciously aware of, what does this mean in your home? And how are you supporting this work and the message behind the work?

There are methods to creating a mayhem that sounds different from your usual mayhem. Because mayhem and a heavy drum backbeat end up sounding like Green Day or something. But if you put a different beat within it to create some air and lightness, the chaos comes through better.

An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.

In the hysterical technocracy of modern music, sorrow is sent to the back of the class where it sits, pissing its pants in mortal terror.

There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.

I'm not in the business of telling people what to do. I'm much more in the business of describing things, situations and stuff like that and leaving them out there, and you can make up your minds about them.

You know, an idea is just an idea. There seems to... the kind of epiphanies that you have, like the little sudden bursts of light, they're very small and they're very short and it's the pursuit of the idea that's the important thing. . . . I know a lot of people who have way better ideas than I do that-much more frequently than I do that just can't sit down and actually do it. Ideas are such are a little overrated really; it's the work behind the idea that's the important thing.

Most of the time, feelings just seem to get in the way. They're a luxury for the idle, a bourgeois concept. Feelings are overrated.

The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.

Oh, a passing, skeptical kind of interest. I'm a hammer-and-nails kind of guy.

You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan.

I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.

be mindful of the prayers you send pray hard but pray with care for the tears you are crying now are just your answered prayers letters of light we scale merrily, move mysteriously around so that when you think you're climbing up, man, in fact you're climbing down

The love song must be born into the realm of the irrational, absurd, the distracted, the melancholic, the obsessive, the insane for the love song is the noise of love itself and love is, of course, a form of madness.

The work ethic at art school is completely different than the work ethic amongst people who get into music. People who paint, it's an honorable thing to spend all day and all night in front of your canvas - that is the romantic vision of the painter.

It's a wonderful life if you can find it.

There's always pain around. That's one thing you can guarantee in life - there will always be a surplus of pain.

At the end, we're kind of observers - creative people, I mean. I feel like an observer, and I'm pretty much able to step out of things and see how things are playing out.

I love America. I really do. It's by far the place I like visiting out of anywhere in the world. I get a palpable sense of excitement when the plane's landing. It's a cliché, but there's still an incredible energy about New York in particular.

Death looms large I guess because it should. It's the one thing that we as human beings from birth have a right to. It's the only thing we've really got, and I don't mean to sound bleak about this, but it's a unifying factor amongst us all.

Well, as anyone who actually writes knows, if you sit down and are prepared, then the ideas come. There's a lot of different ways people explain that, but, you know, I find that if I sit down and I prepare myself, generally things get done.

In getting older, I find myself becoming progressively more ineffectual in a lot of different ways, and part of that is down to no longer having the youthful feeling that what you're doing has any true impact.

Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.

The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil.

I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know what to do with.

I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.

You write a scene, and it works or it doesn't. It's immediate.

I am the captain of my pain.

I consider myself to be first and foremost a comic writer. The way I entertain myself - especially in those long and grim hours in the office - is to write stuff I find funny.

To sustain hatred is a very difficult thing to do, year after year. It's exhausting.

If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!

When I start to write a song, I initially fall into patterns and creative habits that are familiar, and because they're familiar, they sound convincing. It's important for me to not pursue those ideas, because I've already done them, but to find ideas that are different and feel strange to write and disconcerting to write.

I write songs in batches and then record them and then can't write again for ages. I try and build one song upon another, they may not obviously look inter-related but often one song acts as a springboard into another.

I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it.

Sound doesn't always have to be heard. Sound can also be created by how a pattern is set up on a surface- how it moves across the surface, how light reflects the surface [and] can generate a feeling. Sound can also be through feeling, through color, through texture.

All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all, because the worth of an idea never becomes apparent until you do it.

I get criticized for a lot of what I write about, but as far as I'm concerned I'm actually standing up and having a look at what goes on in the minds of men, and I have the authority to talk about it because I'm a man.

I've spent my life butting my head against other people's lack of imagination.

Who knows their own story? It certainly makes no sense when you’re in the middle of it

I think there's a certain numbness in modern society, that accepts certain kinds of violence, but represses other kinds of violence.

Your limitations make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

Polly Jean, I love you. I love the texture of your skin, the taste of your saliva, the softness of your ears. I love every inch and every part of your entire body. From your toes and the beautifully curved arches of your feet, to the exceptional shade and warmth of your dark hair. I need you in my life, I hope you need me too.

You can't trust an artist that just makes good records.

You searched through all my poets, From Sappho through to Auden, I saw the book fall from your hands, As you slowly died of boredom.

I just found this world a hard place to be good in,’ says Bunny, then he closes his eyes and, with an expiration of breath, goes still.

I'm not a misogynist, so you can dispense with that. I think I've done wonders for the feminist movement.

I don't like those songs where you have to listen to a story to get into them. I don't want to have to pay attention to music in that way, I just want it to hit me in the heart and do what music's supposed to do.

If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'

I don't think Hollywood makes many good films anymore. How many directors can you really trust to have an artistic vision, not a corporate vision or a watered-down communal one?

At some point you start seeing the difference between what you really want, and what is your priority order. I feel that today I know what I want. That's the problem with perspective, as well as focus and concentration.

Stars have their moments then they die.

The artistic process seems to be mythologized quite a lot into something far greater than it actually is. It is just hard labor.

It is the haunted premises of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void, for love and for comfort and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God...The love song is the sound of our endeavors to become God-like, to rise up and above the earthbound and the mediocre.

I've always done a lot of research and stuff around the songs that I write so there are pages and pages of writing and you can kind of see these songs emerging.

And I wish that I was made of stone So that I would not have to see A beauty impossible to define A beauty impossible to believe A beauty impossible to endure The blood imparted in little sips The smell of you still on my hands As I bring the cup up to my lips No God up in the sky No devil beneath the sea Could do the job that you did, baby Of bringing me to my knees

A is for Answering all your prayers, N is for kNowing that your loverman's going to be the answer.

I'm a believer. I don't go to church. I don't belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn't write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.

Accessible local libraries are vital to communities and to children.

We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all. Because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand, and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you could hold onto that flame, great things could construct around it, that are massive and powerful and world changing, all held up by the tiniest of ideas.

The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.

Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built out of longing great wonders have been willed they're only little tears darling let them spill and lay your head upon my shoulder.

My music has to do with beauty, and it's intended to, if not lift the spirits, then be a kind of a balm to the spirits.

I can control the weather with my moods. I just can’t control my moods.

I still feel very much an imposter in the whole music scene, which I'm quite happy about to be honest.

A gentleman never talks about his tailor.

I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the Johnny Cash Show on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock'n'roll. I watched him and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing, a beautiful, evil thing.

This is how it essentially is for Bunny Junior. He loves his dad. He thinks there is no dad better, cleverer, or more capable, and he stands there beside him with a sense of pride - he's my dad - and he also, of course, stands beside him because he has nowhere else to go.

Getting married, for me, was the best thing I ever did. I was suddenly beset with an immense sense of release, that we have something more important than our separate selves, and that is the marriage. There's immense happiness that can come from working towards that.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.

The rock star is dying. And it's a small tragedy. Rock stars have blogs now. I have no use for that kind of rock star.

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Moving to the country is a very bold thing to do. You can have vague romantic notions about doing that, but in actuality, it can be a terrifying thing.

I'm a big fan of teatowels and am always on the lookout for a good one.

I became a script writer with absolutely no idea of how to write a script whatsoever. I still feel a bit of an outsider in that regard. If I can maintain that approach to screenwriting, it can continue to be enjoyable.

Musicians are at the bottom of the creative pyramid and authors are at the top, and many people think it's unacceptable for someone to attempt to jump from the bottom to the top of the pyramid.

Love is a state that I would like to exist in continuously.

I know when I sit with my band members and we're playing back a song that we've done, I know that they're experiencing it in a completely different way and hearing stuff that they're alerted to because the way the interpret the world is through their ears. Mine is through my eyes.

I look at you and you look at me and deep in our hearts know it That you weren't much of a muse, but then I weren't much of a poet

After a while, you just don't do things you don't wanna do - that's the great freedom you get, the older you get. You learn what to do and what not to do, and what will be a waste of time and what won't be a waste of time.

Brother, be a brother, fill this tiny cup of mine. And please, sir, make it whiskey: I have no head for wine!

It's very intuitive, the way that I approach my work. I only buy something that has a pulse. I may not know how I'm going to use it, but I know it has a pulse and it has multiple readings - if I shift it one way or another, it can be read this way or it can be read that way, but both readings are critical and very much ground the work.

And she moves among the sparrows. And she floats upon the breeze. She moves among the flowers. She moves something deep inside of me

I always thought my records were number one; it's just the charts didn't think so.

Sorrow's child grieves not what has passed, but all the past still yet to come.

An audience is the perfect thing to unleash venom and hate on. It doesn't necessarily mean you hate everyone in the audience but when you've got a so-called adoring mass in front of you, it's a perfect target for that kind of disgust. Sometimes you find yourself in a position where you're venting your disgust on an audience and a lot of them keep coming back 'cos they actually like that aspect. In a way that diffuses the feeling and you don't gel the same release.

I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.

Everyone wants to feel that they matter.

The older I get, the more I feel those kinds of ghosts - especially the women in my life - moving out of the shadows a bit more and becoming more present in my life.

I've never been interested in being relevant.

I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone's little finger and break it in three places.

The society of whores stuck needles in an image of me.

No wonder sorrow doesn’t smile much. No wonder sadness is so sad.

There's that kind of song, "Whoah baby, I love you," which doesn't have a visual element, but a very strong emotional element, and these are the great songs to me - those ones that you put them on and they just make you feel great, or whatever.

It's very important that the music has a sense of adventure to it, and that it's done by the seat of your pants. There's a kind of nervy element about it.

If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that.

I love rock-n-roll. I think it's an exciting art form. It's revolutionary. Still revolutionary and it changed people. It changed their hearts. But yeah, even rock-n-roll has a lot of rubbish, really bad music.

If you're Australian, you feel it in your bones because you're at odds with everybody else, except other Australians, in the sense that people always seem to be behaving strangely. People always seem to be behaving the wrong way, in a different way. You say things and there are silences.

My biggest fear is losing memory because memory is what we are. Your very soul and your very reason to be alive is tied up in memory.

I've always worn suits. To me they're a very practical kind of thing to wear. You put one on and don't really have to think about what you're going to wear.

One thing that I'm really interested in is the kind of esoteric detail that surrounds these great figures. And Wikipedia is full of that kind of stuff, whether it's true or untrue. It staggers me: why, in the short space assigned to a person or an event, that kind of random information is there. To be honest, that's wonderful fuel for songwriting.

The more information you have, the more human our heroes become and consequently the less mysterious and godlike. They need to be godlike.

Everybody tends to overplay live. That's just the nature of playing live. And that can be great, but it can also kill something that's special, and intimate, about a recorded version of a song. You find out very quickly which songs you can play, and which songs you do damage to by playing them live.

People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.

Hamlet got a gun now.

I've always had an obligation to creation, above all.

I'm unable to really write the kind of song that doesn't have a visual element, which most songs don't.

I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.

I was about 12 years old and I was sitting watching the television and it was some kind of talent show, you know, and on marches this monkey, this ape, in a pair of red-checked trousers with a little matching jacket holding a ukelele and it started jigging around playing it, and it was looking straight into the camera, straight at me, and I remember thinking, that's it, that'll be me, you know, that'll be me.

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

You don't meet a lot of people that you really like. I don't anyway.

He who seeks, finds, and who knocks, will be let in.

Some are exploring the world through the subconscious. I've done that on occasions for various reasons, whether it be illness or self abuse, or whatever. Once things start to look grotesque I don't write them or sing them. I couldn't write them - making nightmares into living daylight...The minute it gets dark I shoot back, retreat.

'Inspiration' is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.

Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything. I go into my office every day that I'm in Brighton and work. Whether I feel like it or not is irrelevant.

Despite what people might think, I'm not interested in being dark all the time. I'm actually searching for some kind of light, and I'm always very happy when I can achieve that.

And I kissed away a thousand tears My lady of the Various Sorrows Some begged, some borrowed, some stolen Some kept safe for tomorrow.

Cynicism and defensiveness are two things constantly levelled at me. Look, I've got time for people, I'm good mannered. I usually find that when you're down, nobody has a bloody minute for you. If I was a nobody, you wouldn't even talk to me. People, in general, don't like you being upfront and civil. They hate you for it. They label you a cynic 'cos you're reasonable.

I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely.

Said 2,000 years of Christian history, baby And you ain't learned to love me yet?

I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god.