Quotes from Nick Cave

My biggest fear is losing memory because memory is what we are. Your very soul and your very reason to be alive is tied up in memory.

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.

I don't know, maybe Australian humour isn't supposed to be funny. It's as dry as the Sahara, and I think people miss that.

I'm a believer. I don't go to church. I don't belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn't write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.

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.

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.

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.

Hamlet got a gun now.

Who knows their own story? Certainly it makes no sense when we are living in the midst of it. It's all just clamor and confusion. It only becomes a story when we tell it and retell it. Our small precious recollections that we speak again and again to ourselves and to others, first creating the narrative of our lives and then keeping the story from dissolving into darkness.

God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowel-less being of the Testaments - the vehement glory-monger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.

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

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.

My relationship with my muse is a delicate one at the best of times and I feel that it is my duty to protect her from influences that may offend her fragile nature. She comes to me with the gift of song and in return I treat her with the respect I feel she deserves — in this case this means not subjecting her to the indignities of judgement and competition.

Memory is imagined; it is not real. Don't be ashamed of its need to create; it is the loveliest part of your heart. Myth is the true history. Don't let them tell you that there are no monsters. Don't let them make you feel stupid, just because you are happy to play down in the dark with your flashlight. The mystical world depends on you and your tolerance for the absurd. Be strong, my darling ones, and believe!

It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That's the deal. That's the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.

Wanting everything is the thing that eventually tears you apart.

Oh, we will know, won't we? The stars will explode in the sky Oh, but they don't, do they? Stars have their moment and then they die

I've got some words of wisdom.

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

I am damned,' thinks Bunny Munro in a sudden moment of self-awareness reserved for those who are soon to die.

and that makes him wish all over again that his dad would stop crying, so he can have a turn.

Comatose, Pa's wife, the slobstress, buried an armchair beneath her bulk.

I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a God. It's kind of defending the indefensible, though; I'm critical of what religions are becoming, the more destructive they're becoming. But I think as an artist, particularly, it's a necessary part of what I do, that there is some divine element going on within my songs.

Into the mercy seat I climb My head is shaved, my head is wired And like a moth that tries To enter the bright eye I go shuffling out of life Just to hide in death awhile And anyway I never lied.