Nick Cave Quotes - Page 3

Brother, be a brother, fill this tiny cup of mine. And please, sir, make it whiskey: I have no head for wine!

You write a scene, and it works or it doesn't. It's immediate.

And I wish that I was made of stone So that I would not have to see A beauty impossible to define A beauty impossible to believe A beauty impossible to endure The blood imparted in little sips The smell of you still on my hands As I bring the cup up to my lips No God up in the sky No devil beneath the sea Could do the job that you did, baby Of bringing me to my knees

I was about 12 years old and I was sitting watching the television and it was some kind of talent show, you know, and on marches this monkey, this ape, in a pair of red-checked trousers with a little matching jacket holding a ukelele and it started jigging around playing it, and it was looking straight into the camera, straight at me, and I remember thinking, that's it, that'll be me, you know, that'll be me.

You can't trust an artist that just makes good records.

I get criticized for a lot of what I write about, but as far as I'm concerned I'm actually standing up and having a look at what goes on in the minds of men, and I have the authority to talk about it because I'm a man.

There's that kind of song, "Whoah baby, I love you," which doesn't have a visual element, but a very strong emotional element, and these are the great songs to me - those ones that you put them on and they just make you feel great, or whatever.

And she moves among the sparrows. And she floats upon the breeze. She moves among the flowers. She moves something deep inside of me

I don't like those songs where you have to listen to a story to get into them. I don't want to have to pay attention to music in that way, I just want it to hit me in the heart and do what music's supposed to do.

I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.

The rock star is dying. And it's a small tragedy. Rock stars have blogs now. I have no use for that kind of rock star.

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.

It's very intuitive, the way that I approach my work. I only buy something that has a pulse. I may not know how I'm going to use it, but I know it has a pulse and it has multiple readings - if I shift it one way or another, it can be read this way or it can be read that way, but both readings are critical and very much ground the work.

Cynicism and defensiveness are two things constantly levelled at me. Look, I've got time for people, I'm good mannered. I usually find that when you're down, nobody has a bloody minute for you. If I was a nobody, you wouldn't even talk to me. People, in general, don't like you being upfront and civil. They hate you for it. They label you a cynic 'cos you're reasonable.

After a while, you just don't do things you don't wanna do - that's the great freedom you get, the older you get. You learn what to do and what not to do, and what will be a waste of time and what won't be a waste of time.

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.

I am the captain of my pain.

Said 2,000 years of Christian history, baby And you ain't learned to love me yet?

I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely.

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.

If you're Australian, you feel it in your bones because you're at odds with everybody else, except other Australians, in the sense that people always seem to be behaving strangely. People always seem to be behaving the wrong way, in a different way. You say things and there are silences.

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

The older I get, the more I feel those kinds of ghosts - especially the women in my life - moving out of the shadows a bit more and becoming more present in my life.

There are methods to creating a mayhem that sounds different from your usual mayhem. Because mayhem and a heavy drum backbeat end up sounding like Green Day or something. But if you put a different beat within it to create some air and lightness, the chaos comes through better.

If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!