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.

My father was a teacher and my mother also worked in the school, so the family has a background in education.

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

I suspect the older you get the more invisible you become.

The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.

The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.

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

I consider myself to be first and foremost a comic writer. The way I entertain myself - especially in those long and grim hours in the office - is to write stuff I find funny.

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.

I've always hated narrative songs. I hate those songs where, basically, it's an unfolding of a story.

At school I was an anti-magnet for women.

Everything that's said against me offends me, whether it's true or not.

I'm not a misogynist, so you can dispense with that. I think I've done wonders for the feminist movement.

The guitar is something you kind of embrace and the piano is something you kind of when you play it you sort of push it away. It feels very different.

I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know what to do with.

Look, when I look back, from 20 onwards, I was actually having a pretty good time, I have to say.

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.

I always thought my records were number one; it's just the charts didn't think so.

The more information you have, the more human our heroes become and consequently the less mysterious and godlike. They need to be godlike.

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.

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

L.A. is full of screenwriters. I don't know why. On many levels, it's such a thankless occupation.

I write hate lyrics really well. It's not every day you can use them, really.

Self-editing is the way I write. Ten verses of a song and it's finished. Then we start playing it and if I see that it's too long, I'll start cutting.

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

I don't have any authority to talk about the domestic policies of America. But as an outsider, I am mystified by the fact that you are encouraged to buy a gun, but if you use it for the purpose that it is expressly designed for, you get the death penalty. That aspect of America is kind of mystifying.

When you're making a film, there are so many people involved that you get opinions and notes from people and you don't even know who they are. I find that quite difficult and it wears you down.

Getting married, for me, was the best thing I ever did. I was suddenly beset with an immense sense of release, that we have something more important than our separate selves, and that is the marriage. There's immense happiness that can come from working towards that.

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

I was reading The Bible a lot through my 20s, mostly the Old Testament, just because I was knocked out by the language and the stories. I felt that the God being talked about there, who was this insane, vindictive patriarch - it was kind of thrilling, and titillated something in me at the time.

No, I wouldn't direct a movie, no. I couldn't. I don't have the patience for it, I don't have the people skills. You have to be clever. I'm not really clever in that kind of way. And you have to be able to manipulate people, but at the same time allow them to feel like they are manipulating you, to get the kind of movie that you want.

Moving to the country is a very bold thing to do. You can have vague romantic notions about doing that, but in actuality, it can be a terrifying thing.

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.

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

The only person who can say they're happy getting old is someone who isn't actually old yet. Every day, I get less and less happy about that idea.

When you're talking about rock n' roll, myth-making is what it's all about.

My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.

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.

My records are basically a litany of complaints against the world, and I'm quite like that in real life as well.

People are always surprised to see clues to my being a normal kind of guy. As if I'm somehow letting the team down.

I have an armchair interest in gardening, but I don't like to get my knees dirty. I don't have a garden.

Songwriting, I have to take myself away from everybody to do. It's an unsightly act.

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.

Most of my ideals and stuff really come from my mother.

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.

I have a particular dislike for children's films. I'm way past the novelty aspect.

I think it's a part of us as human beings that we search outside of ourselves for meaning.

I've spent my life butting my head against other people's lack of imagination.

I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing.

The idea of acting is something that absolutely repulses me. I just can't do it. I'm terrible at it. I get roped into films every now and then, and it's always a disaster.

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.

Most screen violence is tedious.

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.

The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new.

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

I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.

Being a parent can make you a horrible person at times, because you're pushed to the limit constantly.

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.

I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.

If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'

The work ethic at art school is completely different than the work ethic amongst people who get into music. People who paint, it's an honorable thing to spend all day and all night in front of your canvas - that is the romantic vision of the painter.

I don't think Hollywood makes many good films anymore. How many directors can you really trust to have an artistic vision, not a corporate vision or a watered-down communal one?

When I'm singing 'Deanna,' for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.

Accessible local libraries are vital to communities and to children.

I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.

Texting is apocalyptic on some level. It's a reduction of things.

I've always felt like an imposter, in the whole, as a musician.

I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.

The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn't, it dies. It's important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.

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

To my undying shame, I do read reviews. I don't read them all, but I like to get some kind of idea how things are going.

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.

Getting married for me was the best thing I ever did. I was suddenly beset with an immense sense of release that we have something more important than our separate selves and that is the marriage. Theres immense happiness that can come from working towards that.

I don't write happy songs. Who does? I don't know anybody who writes happy songs, really.

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.

A gentleman never talks about his tailor.

Some people, myself in particular, have an adversarial relationship with the camera, and it sprouts up in every photograph.

The guitar is something you kind of embrace, and the piano is something you kind of - when you play it, you sort of push it away. It feels very different.

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.

When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?'

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.

Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff.

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

It's always a pleasure on a personal note for me to come back to Australia.

It's an Australian thing to be dismissive. We find that endearing. Americans don't. They believe what you say.

To me, I don't write when I'm depressed. If I'm depressed, which is actually rare, I'm not doing anything, you know, and I'm not able to do anything.

Personally I find the story of Christ incredibly moving.

If beautiful movies can influence you to go out and hug your children, then we have to be honest and say that other movies can inspire you to do bad things.

Musicians are at the bottom of the creative pyramid and authors are at the top, and many people think it's unacceptable for someone to attempt to jump from the bottom to the top of the pyramid.

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.

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.

It's possible to get through life without a religious structure, but I don't think that's a very fruitful way to live.

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.

I've always worn suits. To me they're a very practical kind of thing to wear. You put one on and don't really have to think about what you're going to wear.

Early on I realized when you write a song about someone, it flatters them on some level, and gives you a lot of room to move within a relationship. A song can kind of get the girl, for sure.

I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god.

When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.

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.

People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.

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.