Nick Cave Quotes

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.

We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all. Because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand, and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you could hold onto that flame, great things could construct around it, that are massive and powerful and world changing, all held up by the tiniest of ideas.

Your limitations make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are.

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.

I can control the weather with my moods. I just can’t control my moods.

It's a wonderful life if you can find it.

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.

He who seeks, finds, and who knocks, will be let in.

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.

Who knows their own story? It certainly makes no sense when you’re in the middle of it

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

Love is a state that I would like to exist in continuously.

Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.

I've never been interested in being relevant.

Polly Jean, I love you. I love the texture of your skin, the taste of your saliva, the softness of your ears. I love every inch and every part of your entire body. From your toes and the beautifully curved arches of your feet, to the exceptional shade and warmth of your dark hair. I need you in my life, I hope you need me too.

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.

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.

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

The love song must be born into the realm of the irrational, absurd, the distracted, the melancholic, the obsessive, the insane for the love song is the noise of love itself and love is, of course, a form of madness.

Sorrow's child grieves not what has passed, but all the past still yet to come.

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.

'Inspiration' is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.

But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .

I'm a big fan of teatowels and am always on the lookout for a good one.

You don't meet a lot of people that you really like. I don't anyway.