Quotes from Nick Cave

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.

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.

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

If you took love out of the equation, I wouldn't know what else to write about.

I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.

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

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

In getting older, I find myself becoming progressively more ineffectual in a lot of different ways, and part of that is down to no longer having the youthful feeling that what you're doing has any true impact.

Everyone wants to feel that they matter.

I know when I sit with my band members and we're playing back a song that we've done, I know that they're experiencing it in a completely different way and hearing stuff that they're alerted to because the way the interpret the world is through their ears. Mine is through my eyes.

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.

I'm hugely self-critical in the morning.

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.

I won't go into the details, but I ready myself for the day. I am a high-maintenance type of guy.

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.

I've always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.

A rock musician's career is short-lived. To extend it, you need to do other things to keep yourself fresh.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.