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

I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be–godlike. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

Said 2,000 years of Christian history, baby And you ain’t learned to love me yet? — Nick Cave

The actualising of God through the medium of the love song remains my prime motivation as an artist. — Nick Cave

If you took love out of the equation, I wouldn’t know what else to write about. — Nick Cave

I went down to my baby’s house And I sat down on the step Said 2,000 years of Christian history, baby And you ain’t learned to love me yet? — Nick Cave

I’m kind of old–school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it. But I also love listening to audio books. — Nick Cave

Well, I said, if the past don’t get you, the fucking future sure will. — Nick Cave

Oh, fuck it, I’m a monster, I admit it! — Nick Cave

Everyone wants to feel that they matter. — Nick Cave

Do you hear what I hear, babe? Does it make you feel afraid? — Nick Cave

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

I still feel very much an imposter in the whole music scene, which I’m quite happy about to be honest. — Nick Cave

At the end, we’re kind of observers–creative people, I mean. I feel like an observer, and I’m pretty much able to step out of things and see how things are playing out. — Nick Cave

I don’t feel I’m thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion. — Nick Cave

One of my big fears is drying up, and the more I create, the more I feel myself shrinking beneath the backlog of work I’ve done. — Nick Cave

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

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. — Nick Cave

We are still struggling with people who don’t feel comfortable going into museums. As a visual artist I ask how artists can be part of enacting a change. — Nick Cave

I’m a kind of hard–wired pessimist. I can’t help but see the world in a certain kind of way. — Nick Cave

I just found this world a hard place to be good in,’ says Bunny, then he closes his eyes and, with an expiration of breath, goes still. — Nick Cave

That’s what I like about watching a movie: you enter an imagined world that’s more interesting, more engaging than your own. Or less painful than your own. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

I’ve always had an obligation to creation, above all. — Nick Cave

I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs. — Nick Cave

I’m unable to really write the kind of song that doesn’t have a visual element, which most songs don’t. — Nick Cave

I don’t write happy songs. Who does? I don’t know anybody who writes happy songs, really. — Nick Cave

Sometimes the song isn’t strong enough to contain the fiction, because memories are fictions. — Nick Cave

I’ve always hated narrative songs. I hate those songs where, basically, it’s an unfolding of a story. — Nick Cave

What you’re really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I’m not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood. — Nick Cave

The way I take in the world is by seeing it; that is very much evident in the songs that I write. — Nick Cave

I would hate to think my songs were giving advice to people. — Nick Cave

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I’m not tryingto write songs from a young person’s point of view.That only ends in disaster. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

Kylie Minogue is the greatest thing that has happened to Australian music. — Nick Cave

It’s very important that the music has a sense of adventure to it, and that it’s done by the seat of your pants. There’s a kind of nervy element about it. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

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

I have a very strange relationship in general with women around my music. There’s some that understand it and some that think there should be a law against it. — Nick Cave

I see it as my duty in some way is to be out in the world as an Australian putting forward what I consider to be authentic Australian music. — Nick Cave

My music has to do with beauty, and it’s intended to, if not lift the spirits, then be a kind of a balm to the spirits. — Nick Cave

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

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. — Nick Cave

The secret to longevity in the music business is to change, and to be able to change. […] An actor has to assume other people’s identities. A rock star doesn’t need to do that. […] But change is important. — Nick Cave

In the hysterical technocracy of modern music, sorrow is sent to the back of the class where it sits, pissing its pants in mortal terror. — Nick Cave

I have to be able to see the thing that’s going on that I’m writing about, or else it just doesn’t make any sense to me. — Nick Cave

Anything that I’m doing I’m writing specifically for a particular project. — Nick Cave

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It’s the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. — Nick Cave

I feel very much a part of what I’m writing about, and I’m writing about things that concern me on a daily basis. I’m not really interested in writing musical diaries, if you know what I mean. — Nick Cave

Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life. — Nick Cave

I’ve always done a lot of research and stuff around the songs that I write so there are pages and pages of writing and you can kind of see these songs emerging. — Nick Cave

With writing a song, I’ve always felt, right from the start, like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don’t ever feel there’s a font of ideas to fall back on. — Nick Cave

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

Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can. — Nick Cave

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. — Nick Cave

A rock musician’s career is short–lived. To extend it, you need to do other things to keep yourself fresh. — Nick Cave

Rock music is the province of the young, and it should be made by young people. I’m not running around in a pair of spandex tights trying to reclaim my youth. — Nick Cave

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