Nick Cave citations

“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."”

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

“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.”

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

“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”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”

“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.”

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

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

“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…”