Nick Cave Quotes (27 Quotes)


    I was making them do things and make the decisions that I always wanted them to do in movies. I mean, we had no story, we only had the proposition, so I was just writing 10 pages a day and handing them over and seeing what happens.

    Oh, I don't know about that. I make the suits, so I don't know.

    I guess in all these films, ... there is a sense that morality is a luxury that we can afford in less fraught times, but in extreme situations and extreme environments, morality becomes a very grey issue.

    I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

    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.


    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.

    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.

    That Cave has long been at the top of his game in another creative discipline clearly didn't hurt either. Writing dialogue for me is always about rhythm and the musicality of what people are talking about, ... And I find it difficult to write words that are merely illustrative or that don't have an innate beauty in the actual line, and that comes from songwriting. And I always say the sentences out loud as I write them to see how they work rhythmically.

    I've always been interested in both areas. For a long time, they were on a parallel plane, and I didn't dedicate myself to one or the other any less or any more. And then I just reached a revelation that it wasn't just about dance, it wasn't about fine art. It was about these two forces that were important to me, finding a medium that would allow me to investigate both.

    With a large Aboriginal contingent that proves central to the plot, The Proposition certainly takes an axe to some pieties about Australia's past. That was the thing that the indigenous actors were really pleased about, ... To be in a film where they got an opportunity to fight back.

    Being of a certain age made things clearer. I'm 48, that's helped enormously, ... I have a much fuller understanding of relationships than I did when I was 20. A central thing about the relationship between Stanley and his wife Martha played by Emily Watson is that they don't have a kid. Arthur Burns, who they are trying to obliterate, has a family. I could never have written that relationship without an understanding of what it means to actually have a family, and the incredible emotional pull that that has on you.

    I've always had an obligation to creation, above all.

    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.

    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.

    It was about the preciousness of that, and how they viewed those birds as art, as something valuable. I didn't care one way or another back then, but now, thinking about my grandparents -- who are still alive but getting older -- I see the birds as sort of time capsules. Now I go home during the holidays and they hold a lot of weight in terms of nostalgia and memory. Now they mean everything.

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

    I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely.

    It was a good script and it was a great story. It was just that it was basically an American western dumped in Australia. When I read it, I thought everyone's been behaving properly. Where's the incompetence, where's the failure.

    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.

    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.

    Our Easters were elaborate productions with these big Easter Egg hunts out in the woods, and it was always, like, major . There was a golden egg and these crazy Easter baskets. My mother had seven sisters, and they all had children, so we'd have like 40 kids doing stuff together. It was a very celebrated time, one of many, and I realize now how it affected me as a kid.

    I was determined not to spend inordinate amounts of time on something I felt would fundamentally never get made.

    For me, what we didn't want was the American-style hero,

    I just sat down and banged it out in the spirit of those old Hollywood guys.

    I always heard it musically, and I guess it's written rhythmically as well ... It's very similar to the way my band operates. There are moments of intense violence and there are also moments of long, lyrical, quiet sadness.

    I think for Johnny, Australia had its western story as well,

    You were the local joke, really, ... It kept sliding further into summer, and the locals were thinking it was going to be really funny watching these people try to make a movie under those conditions. Nobody could even open their mouth without a fly crawling into it.


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