Quotes by Nick Cave
It's an Australian thing to be dismissive. We find that endearing. Americans don't. They believe what you say.
I won't go into the details, but I ready myself for the day. I am a high-maintenance type of guy.
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.
People are always surprised to see clues to my being a normal kind of guy. As if I'm somehow letting the team down.
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.
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.
I'm a big fan of teatowels and am always on the lookout for a good one.
I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.
If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that.
Songs you can dip in and out of, but a book... well, it can overpower you.
People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.
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've always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.
You can't trust an artist that just makes good records.
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?
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.
I write hate lyrics really well. It's not every day you can use them, really.
Being a parent can make you a horrible person at times, because you're pushed to the limit constantly.
The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
Personally I find the story of Christ incredibly moving.
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.
L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation.
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.
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.
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.
