Nick Cave Quotes

A gentleman never talks about his tailor.

- Nick Cave

Guns are part of the American psyche, aren't they? This is collateral damage for having a Wild West mentality. It's intrinsic to the American psyche. It's never going to change.

- Nick Cave

To my undying shame, I do read reviews. I don't read them all, but I like to get some kind of idea how things are going.

- Nick Cave

A rock musician's career is short-lived. To extend it, you need to do other things to keep yourself fresh.

- Nick Cave

L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation.

- Nick Cave

I have an armchair interest in gardening, but I don't like to get my knees dirty. I don't have a garden.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

The idea of acting is something that absolutely repulses me. I just can't do it. I'm terrible at it. I get roped into films every now and then, and it's always a disaster.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

What I'm resistant to is the 'Walk the Line' biopic, where you have this redemptive life done in two hours. It just doesn't wash with me. I've been there and things don't work out that way.

- Nick Cave

Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.

- Nick Cave

The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.

- Nick Cave

People often can't separate, or can't understand, that to be funny is to be serious; it's a way of pulling people in and not scaring them off. I think a lot of the funny stuff, underneath it, there's a deep anxiety going on.

- Nick Cave

I was reading The Bible a lot through my 20s, mostly the Old Testament, just because I was knocked out by the language and the stories. I felt that the God being talked about there, who was this insane, vindictive patriarch - it was kind of thrilling, and titillated something in me at the time.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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?

- Nick Cave

I suspect the older you get the more invisible you become.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

It's an Australian thing to be dismissive. We find that endearing. Americans don't. They believe what you say.

- Nick Cave

I don't write happy songs. Who does? I don't know anybody who writes happy songs, really.

- Nick Cave

Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff.

- Nick Cave

I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

I'm hugely self-critical in the morning.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with is Hollywood. The way it works is that people get an idea you could possibly do something, but there's a one-in-a-hundred chance that it could get made.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

Self-editing is the way I write. Ten verses of a song and it's finished. Then we start playing it and if I see that it's too long, I'll start cutting.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

Accessible local libraries are vital to communities and to children.

- Nick Cave

The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new.

- Nick Cave

I'm kind of old-school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it. But I also love listening to audio books.

- Nick Cave

I write hate lyrics really well. It's not every day you can use them, really.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

No, I wouldn't direct a movie, no. I couldn't. I don't have the patience for it, I don't have the people skills. You have to be clever. I'm not really clever in that kind of way. And you have to be able to manipulate people, but at the same time allow them to feel like they are manipulating you, to get the kind of movie that you want.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

Kylie Minogue is the greatest thing that has happened to Australian music.

- Nick Cave

If beautiful movies can influence you to go out and hug your children, then we have to be honest and say that other movies can inspire you to do bad things.

- Nick Cave

Some people, myself in particular, have an adversarial relationship with the camera, and it sprouts up in every photograph.

- Nick Cave

As Australians, we see the law as inherently bad. We have a real inherent distaste for authority in our makeup.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

I don't have any authority to talk about the domestic policies of America. But as an outsider, I am mystified by the fact that you are encouraged to buy a gun, but if you use it for the purpose that it is expressly designed for, you get the death penalty. That aspect of America is kind of mystifying.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.

- Nick Cave

The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.

- Nick Cave

The guitar is something you kind of embrace, and the piano is something you kind of - when you play it, you sort of push it away. It feels very different.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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. What do I write about? I never know.

- Nick Cave

When I'm singing 'Deanna,' for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.

- Nick Cave

To me, I don't write when I'm depressed. If I'm depressed, which is actually rare, I'm not doing anything, you know, and I'm not able to do anything.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

People are always surprised to see clues to my being a normal kind of guy. As if I'm somehow letting the team down.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

It's possible to get through life without a religious structure, but I don't think that's a very fruitful way to live.

- Nick Cave

What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn't, it dies. It's important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.

- Nick Cave

I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

One of my big fears is drying up, and the more I create, the more I feel myself shrinking beneath the backlog of work I've done.

- Nick Cave

Everything that's said against me offends me, whether it's true or not.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

Look, when I look back, from 20 onwards, I was actually having a pretty good time, I have to say.

- Nick Cave

When you're making a film, there are so many people involved that you get opinions and notes from people and you don't even know who they are. I find that quite difficult and it wears you down.

- Nick Cave

I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

I've always hated narrative songs. I hate those songs where, basically, it's an unfolding of a story.

- Nick Cave

The only person who can say they're happy getting old is someone who isn't actually old yet. Every day, I get less and less happy about that idea.

- Nick Cave

My records are basically a litany of complaints against the world, and I'm quite like that in real life as well.

- Nick Cave

Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

I think it's a part of us as human beings that we search outside of ourselves for meaning.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

I have a particular dislike for children's films. I'm way past the novelty aspect.

- Nick Cave

I won't go into the details, but I ready myself for the day. I am a high-maintenance type of guy.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

Personally I find the story of Christ incredibly moving.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

I see it as my duty in some way is to be out in the world as an Australian putting forward what I consider to be authentic Australian music.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

I've watched 'Oprah Winfrey.' And I'm proud. I don't care what anybody says! I don't know whether I've watched it. I've been in the room while it's been on.

- Nick Cave

I've always felt like an imposter, in the whole, as a musician.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

I don't know, maybe Australian humour isn't supposed to be funny. It's as dry as the Sahara, and I think people miss that.

- Nick Cave

I've always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.

- Nick Cave

Most screen violence is tedious.

- Nick Cave

I'm not someone who's particularly in touch with the way they feel. I've heard it said that you should be a 'human being' not a 'human doing', but I'm a human doing, very much so.

- Nick Cave

With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.

- Nick Cave

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.

- Nick Cave

Texting is apocalyptic on some level. It's a reduction of things.

- Nick Cave

My father was a teacher and my mother also worked in the school, so the family has a background in education.

- Nick Cave

I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

I have a very strange relationship in general with women around my music. There's some that understand it and some that think there should be a law against it.

- Nick Cave

It's always a pleasure on a personal note for me to come back to Australia.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

I would hate to think my songs were giving advice to people.

- Nick Cave

When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?'

- Nick Cave

If you took love out of the equation, I wouldn't know what else to write about.

- Nick Cave

Songwriting, I have to take myself away from everybody to do. It's an unsightly act.

- Nick Cave

Being a parent can make you a horrible person at times, because you're pushed to the limit constantly.

- Nick Cave

Songs you can dip in and out of, but a book... well, it can overpower you.

- Nick Cave

When you're talking about rock n' roll, myth-making is what it's all about.

- Nick Cave

I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.

- Nick Cave

Early on I realized when you write a song about someone, it flatters them on some level, and gives you a lot of room to move within a relationship. A song can kind of get the girl, for sure.

- Nick Cave

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

- Nick Cave

Most of my ideals and stuff really come from my mother.

- Nick Cave