1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Nick Cave

Nick Cave Quotes

Nicholas Edward Cave is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional film actor, best known as the frontman of the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Referred to as rock music's "Prince of Darkness", Cave's music is generally characterised by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences, and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love and violence.

Born and raised in rural Victoria, Cave studied art before turning to music in the 1970s. As frontman of the Boys Next Door , he became a central figure in Melbourne's burgeoning post-punk scene. The band relocated to London in 1980, but, disillusioned by life there, evolved towards a darker, more challenging sound, and acquired a reputation as "the most violent live band in the world". The Birthday Party is regarded as a major influence on gothic rock, and Cave, with his shock of black hair and pale, emaciated look, was described in the media as a poster boy for the genre.

After the break-up of the Birthday Party in 1983, Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Much of the band's early material was set in a mythic American Deep South, drawing on spirituals and Delta blues, while Cave's preoccupation with Old Testament notions of good versus evil culminated in what has been called his signature song, "The Mercy Seat" . The 1996 album Murder Ballads features "Where the Wild Roses Grow", a duet with Kylie Minogue, Cave's most commercially successful single to date. The band has released 16 studio albums, the most recent being 2016's Skeleton Tree. Cave formed the garage rock group Grinderman in 2006, which has since released two albums.

Cave co-wrote, scored and starred in the 1988 Australian prison film Ghosts... of the Civil Dead , directed by John Hillcoat. He also wrote the screenplay for Hillcoat's bushranger film The Proposition , and composed the soundtrack with frequent collaborator Warren Ellis. The pair's film score credits include The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , The Road , Lawless , and Hell or High Water . Cave is the subject of several films, including the semi-fictional "day in the life" 20,000 Days on Earth , and the documentary One More Time with Feeling . Cave has also released two novels: And the Ass Saw the Angel and The Death of Bunny Munro .

Cave's songs have been covered by a wide range of artists, including Johnny Cash, Metallica and Arctic Monkeys. He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2007.

✵ 22. September 1957
Nick Cave photo

Works

King Ink
King Ink
Nick Cave
The Death of Bunny Munro
Nick Cave: 96 quotes10 likes

Famous Nick Cave Quotes

“And she moves among the sparrows. And she floats upon the breeze. She moves among the flowers. She moves something deep inside of me”

Nick Cave

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

Nick Cave

Source: Complete Lyrics

“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."”

Nick Cave

Politics, society and humanity

“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.”

Nick Cave book The Death of Bunny Munro

Source: The Death of Bunny Munro

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

Nick Cave

Nick Cave Quotes about God

“Although I've never been an atheist, there are periods when I struggled with the whole thing. As someone who uses words, you need to able to justify your belief with language, I'd have arguments and the atheist always won because he'd go back to logic. Belief in God is illogical, it's absurd. There's no debate. I feel it intuitively, it comes from the heart, a magical place. But I still I fluctuate from day to day. Sometimes I feel very close to the notion of God, other times I don't. I used to see that as a failure. Now I see it as a strength, especially compared to the more fanatical notions of what God is. I think doubt is an essential part of belief.”

Nick Cave

Mojo (January, 2005)
God and religion

“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.”

Nick Cave

Observer (May, 1998)
God and religion

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

Nick Cave

Given during a lecture at the Vienna Poetry Festival (1998)
God and religion

“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.”

Nick Cave

Euchrid Eucrow in Cave's novel And the Ass Saw the Angel (1988)
God and religion

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), Zoo-Music Girl

“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.”

Nick Cave

&quot;The resurrection of Nick Cave&quot; http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2004/11/18/cave/index2.html, Salon (November 18, 2004) <br class="br">God and religion

Nick Cave Quotes about thinking

“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.”

Nick Cave

Melody Maker (May, 1997)
Ageing and death

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), Mercy

“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.”

Nick Cave book The Death of Bunny Munro

The Death of Bunny Munro (2009)
Books

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

Nick Cave

Politics, society and humanity

“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.”

Nick Cave

&quot;Interview with Old Nick&quot; http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/feb/23/popandrock.features, The Guardian (February 23, 2008) <br class="br">God and religion

Nick Cave: Trending quotes

“Express thyself! Say something loudly! Aaaaaaah!
What's in that room, Sonny?”

Nick Cave book King Ink

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), King Ink

“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”

Nick Cave

Nick Cave Quotes

“Samuel: What's a misanthrope?
Two Bob: A misanthrope is a bugger who hates every other bugger.
Samuel: Are we misanthropes?
Arthur: Lord no! We're family.”

Nick Cave

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

Nick Cave

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

Nick Cave

“If this is heaven ahm bailin' out!”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Mutiny (1993), Mutiny in Heaven

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Saint Huck

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Bad Seed EP (1993), Fears of Gun

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Knockin' on Joe

“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”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), Up Jumped the Devil

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), 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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Junkyard (1982), She's Hit

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Well of Misery

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Tupelo

“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!”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Junkyard (1982), Junkyard

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Mutiny (1993), 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…”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Cabin Fever!

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

Nick Cave book King Ink

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), King Ink

“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.”

Nick Cave

&quot;Interview with Nick Cave&quot; http://www.musicomh.com/music/features/nick-cave_0308.htm, musicOMH (March, 2008) <br class="br">God and religion

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), Zoo-Music Girl

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), A Box for Black Paul

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Bad Seed EP (1993), Deep in the Woods

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Blind Lemon Jefferson

“Rats in paradise! Rats in paradise!”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Mutiny (1993), Mutiny in Heaven

“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!”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), City of Refuge

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

Nick Cave book King Ink

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), King Ink

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

Nick Cave

Cave on his interest in Eastern and nontheistic spirituality
God and religion

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), New Morning

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), A Box for Black Paul

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Well of Misery

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Black Crow King

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), A Dead Song

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Your Funeral… My Trial (1986), The Carny

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Saint Huck

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Tupelo

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

Nick Cave book King Ink

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), King Ink

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), Up Jumped the Devil

“Punishment? Reward! Punishment? Reward!”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Mutiny (1993), Mutiny in Heaven

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), A Box for Black Paul

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Cabin Fever!

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), The Mercy Seat

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Tupelo

“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.”

Nick Cave

monologue in 20,000 Days on Earth
Music

“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…”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Mutiny (1993), Mutiny in Heaven

“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 Cave

Song lyrics, Mutiny (1993), Mutiny in Heaven

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), Nick the Stripper

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, The Bad Seed EP (1993), Wild World

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

Nick Cave

This will not hurt a bit.
Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), A Box for Black Paul

“Death favours those that favour death.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), A Box for Black Paul

“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.”

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, Your Funeral… My Trial (1986), The Carny

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

Nick Cave

The Daily Telegraph (Novevember 20, 1997)
God and religion

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

Nick Cave

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Saint Huck

Similar authors

Kurt Cobain photo
Kurt Cobain158
American musician and artist None
Nikki Sixx photo
Nikki Sixx22
American musician None
Jimi Hendrix photo
Jimi Hendrix52
American musician, singer and songwriter None
Frank Zappa photo
Frank Zappa129
American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and fil… None
Bob Dylan photo
Bob Dylan523
American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist None
Bruce Willis photo
Bruce Willis8
American actor, producer, and musician None
Bob Marley photo
Bob Marley118
Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician None
Charles Manson photo
Charles Manson53
American criminal and musician None
David Bowie photo
David Bowie105
British musician, actor, record producer and arranger None
John Lydon photo
John Lydon22
English singer, songwriter, and musician None