408 Quotes by Nick Cave

Do you want to know how to write a song? Songwriting is about counterpoint. Counterpoint is the key. Putting two disparate images beside each other and seeing which way the sparks fly. Like letting a small child in the same room as, I don’t know, a Mongolian psychopath or something, and just sitting back and seeing what happens. Then you send in a clown, say, on a tricycle and again you wait and you watch. And if that doesn’t do it, you shoot the clown.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Songs need to have the ability to change and to grow for sure. They take on lives of their own. Some songs just don’t have that capacity. They’re locked within a period of time. And as soon as you take them out of that period of time, they die very quickly.

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

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