Nick Cave Quotes
- All Quotes
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Oh, a passing, skeptical kind of interest. I'm a hammer-and-nails kind of guy.
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I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.
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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.
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I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.
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When you've been initiated, you can stand in the world differently. And I think it is up to all of us, we can have cheerleaders, we can have supporters, but it comes down to us as individuals, how do we now proceed? Do we have the tools to proceed?
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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.
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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.
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It was about the preciousness of that, and how they viewed those birds as art, as something valuable. I didn't care one way or another back then, but now, thinking about my grandparents - who are still alive but getting older - I see the birds as sort of time capsules. Now I go home during the holidays and they hold a lot of weight in terms of nostalgia and memory. Now they mean everything.
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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.
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Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.
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When I start to write a song, I initially fall into patterns and creative habits that are familiar, and because they're familiar, they sound convincing. It's important for me to not pursue those ideas, because I've already done them, but to find ideas that are different and feel strange to write and disconcerting to write.
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Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.
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I write hate lyrics really well. It's not every day you can use them, really.
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An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.
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Stars have their moments then they die.
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I'm not a misogynist, so you can dispense with that. I think I've done wonders for the feminist movement.
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A is for Answering all your prayers, N is for kNowing that your loverman's going to be the answer.
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...be mindful of the prayers you send pray hard but pray with care for the tears you are crying now are just your answered prayers letters of light we scale merrily, move mysteriously around so that when you think you're climbing up, man, in fact you're climbing down...
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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.
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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.
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There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.
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I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.
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There are times when I think I can sing it better, but usually I find that I can't.
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It's an Australian thing to be dismissive. We find that endearing. Americans don't. They believe what you say.