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

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

Different Eye Song
Your limitations make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are.
NICK CAVE

Disaster Limitation Wonderful
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

Class Pants Sorrow
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’ve always had an obligation to creation, above all.
NICK CAVE

Always Creation Obligation
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
It’s always a risky business inviting somebody on stage. You never know what they’re going to do. I try to avoid letting people join me onstage because it can be very distracting, and overly theatrical.
NICK CAVE

Business People Risky Trying
Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.
NICK CAVE

Betrayal Film Violence
The singing tells everybody what to do musically.
NICK CAVE

Everybody Musically Singing
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
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
No wonder sorrow doesn’t smile much. No wonder sadness is so sad.
NICK CAVE

Sadness Sorrow Wonder
You write a scene, and it works or it doesn’t. It’s immediate.
NICK CAVE

Immediate Scene Writing
The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
NICK CAVE

Body Cells Musical
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 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
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

Country Grew Influence
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

Important Perspective Writing
Kylie Minogue is the greatest thing that has happened to Australian music.
NICK CAVE

Australian Country Day Happened People
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

Hey Kids Wife
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

Christian Country Different People
To sustain hatred is a very difficult thing to do, year after year. It’s exhausting.
NICK CAVE

Difficult Hatred Years
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

Art Changed Rocks Thinking
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.
NICK CAVE

Age Country Obvious People 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
Texting is apocalyptic on some level. It’s a reduction of things.
NICK CAVE

Levels Reduction Texting
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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