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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

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’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
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

Country Moving Notion Romantic
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
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
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
A gentleman never talks about his tailor.
NICK CAVE

Gentleman Southern Gentleman Tailors
Your limitations make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are.
NICK CAVE

Disaster Limitation Wonderful
I’ve spent my life butting my head against other people’s lack of imagination.
NICK CAVE

Butting Imagination People
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

Breathing Challenges Musical
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
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 have a particular dislike for children’s films. I’m way past the novelty aspect.
NICK CAVE

Children Past Way
Kylie Minogue is the greatest thing that has happened to Australian music.
NICK CAVE

Australian Country Day Happened People
The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
NICK CAVE

Body Cells Musical
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

Comforting Lying Night
I’ve always had an obligation to creation, above all.
NICK CAVE

Always Creation Obligation
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
The singing tells everybody what to do musically.
NICK CAVE

Everybody Musically Singing
You write a scene, and it works or it doesn’t. It’s immediate.
NICK CAVE

Immediate Scene Writing
The artistic process seems to be mythologized quite a lot into something far greater than it actually is. It is just hard labor.
NICK CAVE

Artistic Labor Process
I write hate lyrics really well. It’s not every day you can use them, really.
NICK CAVE

Hate Use Writing
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
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
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
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
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

Care Proud Room

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.

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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