Nick Cave Quotes & Sayings

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

Personally I find the story of Christ incredibly moving. — 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

The actualising of God through the medium of the love song remains my prime motivation as an artist. — 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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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. — Nick Cave

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

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

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

Vagina man,' said Bunny, and his two colleagues went quiet and nodded in silent agreement. — Nick Cave

The butcher bird makes its noise
And asks you to agree
With its brutal nesting habits
And its pointless savagery
Now, the nightingale sings to you
And raises up the ante
I put one hand on your round ripe heart
And the other down your panties — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

There are those who work so they can stop.
Stopping is the why of work.
There are those who stop so they can work.
Working is the why of work. — Nick Cave

Rock music is the province of the young, and it should be made by young people. I'm not running around in a pair of spandex tights trying to reclaim my youth. — Nick Cave

Stars have their moments then they die. — 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

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

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. — Nick Cave

Most of my ideals and stuff really come from my mother. — Nick Cave

The secret to longevity in the music business is to change, and to be able to change. An actor has to assume other people's identities. A rock star doesn't need to do that. But change is important. — Nick Cave

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

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

Get down, get down, little Henry Lee
And stay all night with me
You won't find a girl in this damn world
That will compare with me
And the wind did howl and the wind did blow
La la la la la
La la la la lee
A little bird lit down on Henry Lee ... — Nick Cave

Hamlet got a gun now. — Nick Cave

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

I have things that I'm interested in, and I'm not really interested in writing about anything that I'm not interested in. But it's important to me to be able to see it from a different perspective, and add something new to the whole picture. — 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

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

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

You're collaborating with people you don't even know, when you're making a film. You're collaborating with people you've never seen. So, the collaborative process is very, very different than when you're collaborating on a record with the musicians you've worked with all your life. — 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

There Will Always Be Suffering
It Flows Through Life Like Water — Nick Cave

Who knows their own story? Certainly it makes no sense when we are living in the midst of it. It's all just clamor and confusion. It only becomes a story when we tell it and retell it. Our small precious recollections that we speak again and again to ourselves and to others, first creating the narrative of our lives and then keeping the story from dissolving into darkness. — 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

Comatose, Pa's wife, the slobstress, buried an armchair beneath her bulk. — 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

When I start writing songs, and they come easily, I'm always very suspicious. That usually means they're reminding me of something I've already done before. When the songs become unsettling, and I feel anxious about what I'm doing, that usually means it's going to be more interesting later on when we actually record the stuff. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

And Satan sighed and shook his head, played harp amongst the flames. 'It's Hell up there in Heaven too, for all that that is worth. Heaven is just a lie of mine to make it Hell on Earth. — Nick Cave

I've never been interested in being relevant. — Nick Cave

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. — 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

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

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

Buddy, you've been warned. — Nick Cave

Wanting everything is the thing that eventually tears you apart. — 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'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

If you're involved with imagination and the creative process, it's not such a difficult thing to believe in a God. But I'm not involved in any religions, and I've never intended to make religious records or records that preach some kind of point of view. — Nick Cave

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

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

I'm always sort of looking for projects that I can sort of put out into the world, into the public sphere, and to somehow cause an effect. I want to be able to create projects that sort of are going to make people think and think in this sort of magical, sort of fantastical way. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

That's what I like about watching a movie: you enter an imagined world that's more interesting, more engaging than your own. Or less painful than your own. — Nick Cave

I look at you and you look at me and deep in our hearts babe we know it, that you weren't much of a muse, but then, I weren't much of a poet. — Nick Cave

What I think about when I frequent the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan [Museum of Art], and I look at these artifacts that are taken out of context and how we're forced to view them as objects, as relics, as sculpture- static. But what's interesting is what it allows me to do in my head in terms of imagining what the possibilities are or imagining the role in which they played within a particular culture which I'm fascinated by. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

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. — 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

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

Humming softly with the child asleep in his arms, Sardus Swift looked to the winking stars and saw the moon - a smirk on the face of heaven - as he made his way home. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

I feel very much a part of what I'm writing about, and I'm writing about things that concern me on a daily basis. I'm not really interested in writing musical diaries, if you know what I mean. — 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

Do I personally believe in a personal God? No. — 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

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. — 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

No fish can swim until the King is born, until the King is born in Tupelo. — Nick Cave

I can control the weather with my moods. I just can't control my moods. — Nick Cave

My responsibility as an artist is to turn up at the page or the piano or the microphone. The rest is up to God. — Nick Cave

Do you hear what I hear, babe? Does it make you feel afraid? — Nick Cave

And I know why our friendship must be kept a secret. Or they will kill You like they killed You in the Bible. And then we could not be together. If not for them we would live in this valley together. As best friends. But we must be careful, Jesus. I think I would die if anything happened to You ... ' - she cried ah think, for ah could hear her little sobs as she spoke - ' ... just close my eyes and die.' And she let fall a heavy tear, and it passed through the slats and exploded upon mah face, just below the right cheek. And as the droplet began to roll, ah caught it with mah tongue. And ah was shocked momentarily by that tear's sweetness, having known them only as bitter things - only bitter things - always bitter things. — 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 am damned,' thinks Bunny Munro in a sudden moment of self-awareness reserved for those who are soon to die. — Nick Cave

We sit at the gate and scratch, the gaunt fruit of passion. — 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

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

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

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

My true intent is all for your delight. — Nick Cave

Found in a small stone cave bitten from the roadside, stitchless save for his great outsized boots and a plague of flies, fat on the human scrappage of dinners long past, Toad squatted in the slitted stomach of a warm child, eating loudly the face of her hapless, headless father, who sat a good foot off the ground impaled up the ass on a pointed post. — 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

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

I look down at the city again. From here the city resembles a severed head, incinerated and discarded by the side of the river; its cavernous eye sockets are empty, bundles of dead nerves dangle from its neck, its shattered mouth gapes, a few desolate wires hang from its stark, scorched skull and, suddenly and incomprehensibly and so foreign to my body I could weep, I feel my heart expand with what I can only describe as a sensation of hope. Is there a word for that? Hope in the face of grand calamity. — Nick Cave

He who seeks, finds, and who knocks, will be let in, — Nick Cave