Nick Cave, the enigmatic Australian musician and poet, has an extraordinary ability to capture the depths of human emotion with his words. Here are 35 fascinating Nick Cave quotes that offer profound insights into his creative mind.
Cave once mused, “The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.” This quote reflects his belief in the transformative power of art.
He also said, “The thing about bad guys is that they have the courage of their convictions.” Cave’s words often delve into the complexities of human nature, morality, and the creative process. His poetic and thought-provoking quotes continue to resonate with fans and admirers, showcasing the depth of his artistic vision.
Nick Cave Quotes
1- “I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you’re reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.”
2- “Death looms large I guess because it should. It’s the one thing that we as human beings from birth have a right to. It’s the only thing we’ve really got, and I don’t mean to sound bleak about this, but it’s a unifying factor amongst us all.”
3- “Some are exploring the world through the subconscious. I’ve done that on occasions for various reasons, whether it be illness or self abuse, or whatever. Once things start to look grotesque I don’t write them or sing them. I couldn’t write them – making nightmares into living daylight…The minute it gets dark I shoot back, retreat.”
4- “Stars have their moments then they die”
5- “I don’t believe in an interventionist God”
6- “To sustain hatred is a very difficult thing to do, year after year. It’s exhausting.”
7- “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.”
8- “Despite what people might think, I’m not interested in being dark all the time. I’m actually searching for some kind of light, and I’m always very happy when I can achieve that.”
9- “There’s always pain around. That’s one thing you can guarantee in life – there will always be a surplus of pain.”
10- “The more information you have, the more human our heroes become and consequently the less mysterious and godlike. They need to be godlike.”
11- “I don’t write happy songs. Who does? I don’t know anybody who writes happy songs, really.”
12- “I’ve never been interested in being relevant.”
13- “You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan.”
14- “I am not interested in anything that doesn’t have a genuine heart to it. You’ve got to have soul in the hole. If that isn’t there, I don’t see the point.”
15- “My biggest fear is losing memory because memory is what we are. Your very soul and your very reason to be alive is tied up in memory.”
16- “I think there’s a certain numbness in modern society, that accepts certain kinds of violence, but represses other kinds of violence.”
17- “Love is a state that I would like to exist in continuously.”
18- “If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!”
19- “Well, as anyone who actually writes knows, if you sit down and are prepared, then the ideas come. There’s a lot of different ways people explain that, but, you know, I find that if I sit down and I prepare myself, generally things get done.”
20- “I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone’s little finger and break it in three places.”
21- “I suspect the older you get the more invisible you become”
22- “It’s a wonderful life if you can find it.”
23- “I think it’s an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.”
24- “All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all, because the worth of an idea never becomes apparent until you do it.”
25- “I’m not religious, and I’m not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god.”
26- “God is in everything whether I’m mentioning him or not.”
27- “Sometimes the song isn’t strong enough to contain the fiction, because memories are fictions.”
28- “The artistic process seems to be mythologized quite a lot into something far greater than it actually is. It is just hard labor.”
29- “I’ve always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.”
30- “I can control the weather with my moods. I just can’t control my moods.”
31- “People often can’t separate, or can’t understand, that to be funny is to be serious; it’s a way of pulling people in and not scaring them off. I think a lot of the funny stuff, underneath it, there’s a deep anxiety going on.”
32- “Sound doesn’t always have to be heard. Sound can also be created by how a pattern is set up on a surface- how it moves across the surface, how light reflects the surface [and] can generate a feeling. Sound can also be through feeling, through color, through texture.”
33- “Everyone wants to feel that they matter.”
34- “Your limitations make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are.”
35- “Everybody tends to overplay live. That’s just the nature of playing live. And that can be great, but it can also kill something that’s special, and intimate, about a recorded version of a song. You find out very quickly which songs you can play, and which songs you do damage to by playing them live”