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That’s what we [outsiders] feel America is really about – the kind of crazed ravings of the Christian right – when it’s probably something quite different.

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

Art Beautiful Inspire
Stars have their moments then they die.
NICK CAVE

Dies Moments Stars
I’m unable to really write the kind of song that doesn’t have a visual element, which most songs don’t.
NICK CAVE

Elements Song Writing
We are still struggling with people who don’t feel comfortable going into museums. As a visual artist I ask how artists can be part of enacting a change.
NICK CAVE

Artists Museum Struggle
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

Air Heart Writing
And she moves among the sparrows. And she floats upon the breeze. She moves among the flowers. She moves something deep inside of me
NICK CAVE

Flower Moving Sparrow
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?
NICK CAVE

Home Mean Yellow
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

Country Ordinary People Sound
The way I go about writing records is that I make a calendar date to start the new record, so I have nothing. I don’t have a bunch of notes that I bring into the office, I start with nothing at all.
NICK CAVE

Calendars Office Writing
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

Leaving Mind People
The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
NICK CAVE

Body Cells Musical
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

Country Duty People Way World
If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that.
NICK CAVE

Autumn Hard Work Years
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.
NICK CAVE

Balls Thinking Years
Your limitations make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are.
NICK CAVE

Disaster Limitation Wonderful
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.
NICK CAVE

Adventure Element Important
I suspect the older you get the more invisible you become.
NICK CAVE

Country Invisible People Suspects
I write hate lyrics really well. It’s not every day you can use them, really.
NICK CAVE

Hate Use Writing
The body becomes the carrier for the work. It’s not really about the physical body; it really becomes the apparatus that carries and moves the work. I don’t really consider the body as much; I look at it as a tool.
NICK CAVE

Apparatus Looks Moving Tools
To sustain hatred is a very difficult thing to do, year after year. It’s exhausting.
NICK CAVE

Difficult Hatred Years
The singing tells everybody what to do musically.
NICK CAVE

Everybody Musically Singing
Jesus Christ was the biggest blight on the human race, he was. And all them socialists and communists – second rate Christianity.
NICK CAVE

Christianity Communist Jesus
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.
NICK CAVE

Done Song Writing
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.
NICK CAVE

Anything Inspiration Office People
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

Heart Rocks Song
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

Different Eye Song
I have a particular dislike for children’s films. I’m way past the novelty aspect.
NICK CAVE

Children Past Way

That’s what we [outsiders] feel America is really about – the kind of crazed ravings of the Christian right – when it’s probably something quite different.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

That’s what we [outsiders] feel America is really about – the kind of crazed ravings of the Christian right – when it’s probably something quite different.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Nick Cave Quotes