Nick Cave Quotes

“It's a wonderful life if you can find it.”

“My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; there's not much I'm angry about that doesn't affect me quite directly. But the prison system- not particularly capital punishment- but the penal system as it is, and the whole apparatus of judgement, people deciding on other people's fates… that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot. What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"… it's that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people who've stepped outside society's norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But it's also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because they're unable to fit into what a corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable."”

“I just found this world a hard place to be good in,’ says Bunny, then he closes his eyes and, with an expiration of breath, goes still.”

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

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

“Of course I doubt [the existence of God], I would distrust anybody who didn't doubt. But I'm a believer. I have an understanding and belief in the divinity of things. It seems to me that people look at God in the wrong way. They think that God is there to serve them, but it's the other way around. God isn't some kind of cosmic bell-boy to be called upon to sort things out for us. It's important for us to realise that God has given us the potential to sort things out on our own.”

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

“God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, 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.”

“Oh! God! Please let me die beneath her fists!”

“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. So that if you mention God, or a belief in God, in England, it's almost automatically associated with that kind of thinking. Religion's gotten a really bad name.”

“The thing about being young is that you think you're the final product of evolution. You are invincible. And nothing can hurt you. And people don't count. Ah, the solipsism of youth.”

“Thrown into a dungeon,
Bread and water was my portion,
Faith - my only weapon,
To rest the devil's legion.
The speak-hole would slide open,
A viper's voice would pleade,
A voice think with innuendo,
Syphillis and greed.”

“The boy watches his father cross the road and thinks there is something about the way his dad moves through the world that is truly impressive. Cars screech to a halt, drives shake their fists and stick their heads out the windows and curse and blow their horns and Bunny walks on as if radiating some super-human force field, like he has walked off the pages of a comic book. The world can't touch him. He seems to be the grand generator of some hyper-powerful electricity.”

“I think there's a certain numbness in modern society, that accepts certain kinds of violence, but represses other kinds of violence.”

“The brutality of the Old Testament inspired me, the stories and grand gestures. I wrote that stuff up and it influenced the way I saw the world. What I'm trying to say is I didn't walk around in a rage thinking God is a hateful god. I was influenced by looking at the Bible, and it suited me in my life vision at the time to see things in that way. …. After a while I started to feel a little kinder and warmer to the world, and at the same time started to read the New Testament.”

“But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals
Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten…”

“I look at you and you look at me and
deep in our hearts know it

That you weren't much of a muse,
but then I weren't much of a poet”

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

“And I kissed away a thousand tears
My lady of the Various Sorrows
Some begged, some borrowed, some stolen
Some kept safe for tomorrow.”

“If this is heaven ahm bailin' out!”

“O come to me!, O come to me!' is what the dirty city say to Huck.”

“Fingers down the throat of love! Love! Love!”

“O Warden, I surender to you,
Your fists cain't hurt me anymore,
You know, these hands will never wash,
These dirty Death Row floors.”

“My oh My, what a wretched Life.
I was born on the day that my poor mama died.
I was cut from Her belly with a stanley knife.
My daddy did a jig with the drunk midwife”

“O You kings of halls and ends of halls,
You will die within these walls,
And I'll go, all down the row,
Knockin' on Joe.”

“Pilgrim gets 1 hacked daughter,
And all we get are 40 hack reporters,
Uptown 100 skirts are bleeding,
And Mr. Evangilist says She's hit, ev'ry little bit.”

“O the same God that abandon'd her,
Has in turn abandon'd me,
Deep in the Desert of Despair,
I wait at the Well of Misery.”

“Looka yonder! Looka yonder! A big black cloud come!”

“I am the king! I am the king! I am the king!
One dead marine through the hatch,
Scratch and scrape this heavenly body,
Every inch of winning skin,
Honey Honey Honey Honey Honey, come and kiss me-e-e-e-e-e!”

“Another ship ready to dock… the rigging comes loose… like Jennifer's Veil.”

“The Captain's fore-arm like buncht-up rope,
With Anita wrigglin' free onto skull n' dagger,
And a portrait of Christ, nailed to an anchor,
Etched into the upper…”

“Oh! Yer! What a wonderful life! Fats Domino on the radio!”

“If you're involved with imagination and the creative process, it's not such a difficult thing to believe in a God. But I'm not involved in any religions, and I've never intended to make religious records or records that preach some kind of point of view.”

“My body is a monster driven insane,
My heart is a fish toasted in flames.”

“Ah've cried one thousand tears, it's true.”

“The woods eats the woman and dumps her honey-body in the mud,
Her dress floats down the well and it assumes the shape of the body of a little girl,
Yeah, I recognize that girl,
She stumbled in some time last loneliness,
But I could not stand to touch her now,
My one and only onlyness.”

“Here comes the Judgement train! Git on board!”

“Rats in paradise! Rats in paradise!”

“In the days of madness, my brother, my sister,
When you're dragged toward the Hell-mouth,
You will beg for the end, but there ain't gonna be one, friend,
For the grave will spew you out! It will spew you out!”

“King Ink feels like a bug,
Swimming in a soup-bowl.”

“Oh, a passing, skeptical kind of interest. I'm a hammer-and-nails kind of guy.”

“The spears of the bright sun, all brave with its conquest,
Did hover unearthly, in banners of fire.
I knelt in the garden, awash with the dawning,
And a voice came so brightly, I covered my eyes.”

“When ya done ransackin' his room,
Grabbin' any-damn-thing that shines,
Throw the scraps down on the street,
Like all his books and his notes.
All his books and his notes and all the junk that he wrote,
The whole fucken lot goes right up in smoke.”

“Along crags and sunless cracks I go,
Up rib of rock, down spine of stone,
I dare not slumber where the right winds whistle,
Lest her creeping-soul clutch this heart of thistle.”

“I am the black crow king,
Keeper of the forgotten corn,
The King!”

“Hit it! With words like Blood, Soldier and Mother…”

“The carny had a horse, all skin and bone,
A bow-backed nag, that he named "Sorrow",
Now it is buried in a shallow grave,
In the then parched meadow.”

“O you recall the song ya used to sing-a-long,
Shifting the river-trade on that ol' steamer,
Life is but a dream!”

“Tupelo-o-o! Hey, Tupelo! You will reap just what you sow.”

“King Ink strolls into town…
He sniffs around.”

“O poor heart, I was doomed from the start,
Doomed to play the villian's part,
I was the baddest Johnny in the apple cart,
My blood was blacker than the chambers of a dead nun's heart.”

“Punishment? Reward! Punishment? Reward!”

“Here is the hammer, that build the scaffold, and built the box…”

“Tallys up his loneliness, notch by notch,
For the sea offers nuthin' to hold or touch.”

“I hear stories from the chamber,
How Christ was born into a manger,
And like some ragged stranger died up on the cross,
And might I say it seems to fitting in its way,
He was a carpenter by trade,
Or at least that's what I'm told.”

“Well saturday gives what sunday steals,
And a child is born on his brother's heels,
Come sunday morn the first-born is dead,
In a shoebox tied with a ribbon of red.”

“The song is heroic because the song confronts death. The song is immortal and bravely stares down our own extinction. The song emerges from the spirit world with a true message: Some day I will tell you how to slay the dragon.”

“Ah wassa born…
And Lord shakin', even then was dumpt into some icy font,
Like some great stinky unclean!
From slum-chuch to slum-church, ah spilt mah heart to some fat cunt behind a screen…”

“Well, ah tied on, percht on mah bed ah was,
Sticken' a needle in mah arm, Ah tied off,
Fucken wings burst out mah back!”

“Nick the Stripper,
Hideous to the eye,
Hideous to the eye,
He's a fat little insect,
A fat little insect,
And oooooooh! Here we go again.”

“Hold me up baby, for I may fall,
Hold my dish-rag body tall,
Our bodies melt together, we are one,
Post-crucifixion baby, post-crucifixion and all undone.”

“From the words and the thickets,
Come the ghosts of his victims,
'We love you!'
'Ah love you!”

“Death favours those that favour death.”

“And as the company passed from the valley, into a higher ground,
The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow, and on the mound,
Until nothing was left, nothing at all except the body of Sorrow,
That rose in time, to float upon the surface of the eaten soil.”

“My responsibility as an artist is to turn up at the page or the piano or the microphone. The rest is up to God.”

“The mo-o-o-on, its huge cycloptic eye,
Watches the city streets contract, twist and cripple and crack.”