Goodreads helps you follow your favorite authors. Be the first to learn about new releases!
Start by following Nick Cave.

Nick Cave Nick Cave > Quotes

 

 (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)
Showing 1-30 of 170
“I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”
Nick Cave
“But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals
Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .”
Nick Cave
“Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.”
Nick Cave
“Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.”
Nick Cave
“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
“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
“...because once you've got one scar on your face or your heart, its only a matter of time before someone gives you another - and another - until a day doesn't go by when you aren't being bashed senseless, nor a town that you haven't been run out of, and you get to be such a goddamn mess that finally it doesn't feel right unless you're getting the Christ beaten out of you - amd within a year of that first damming fall, those first down borne fists, your first run out, you wind up with flies buzzing around your eyes, back at the same place, the same town, deader than when you left, bobbiong around in the swill - a dirty deadbeat whore in a roadside ditch. But a little part of you deosn't die. A little part of you lives on. And you make an orphan of that corrupt and contemtible part, dumping it right smack in the laps of the ones who first robbed you of your sweetness, for it is the wicked fruit of their crimes, it is their blood, their sin, it belongs there, this child of blood, this spawn of sin...”
Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel
“All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas.”
Nick Cave
“People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.”
Nick Cave
“When?' said the moon to the stars in the sky
Soon' said the wind that followed them all

Who?' said the cloud that started to cry
Me' said the rider as dry as a bone

How?' said the sun that melted the ground
and 'Why?' said the river that refused to run

and 'Where?' said the thunder without a sound
Here' said the rider and took up his gun

No' said the stars to the moon in the sky
No' said the trees that started to moan

No' said the dust that blunted its eyes
Yes' said the rider as white as a bone

No' said the moon that rose from his sleep
No' said the cry of the dying sun

No' said the planet as it started to weep
Yes' said the rider and laid down his gun”
Nick Cave
“I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

And I don't believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that's true
But if I did I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you
To each burn a candle for you
To make bright and clear your path
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

And I believe in Love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
So keep your candlew burning
And make her journey bright and pure
That she will keep returning
Always and evermore

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms


Nick Cave, Complete Lyrics 1978-2007
“It's a wonderful life if you can find it.”
Nick Cave, Complete Lyrics 1978-2007
“It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”
Nick Cave
“If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!”
Nick Cave
“I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it.”
Nick Cave
“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, The Death of Bunny Munro
“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
“I've always had an obligation to creation, above all.”
Nick Cave
“And I wish that I was made of stone
So that I would not have to see
A beauty impossible to define
A beauty impossible to believe

A beauty impossible to endure
The blood imparted in little sips
The smell of you still on my hands
As I bring the cup up to my lips

No God up in the sky
No devil beneath the sea
Could do the job that you did, baby
Of bringing me to my knees”
Nick Cave
“You've got to understand your limitations. It's your limitations that make you the wonderful disaster you most probably are.”
Nick Cave
“Hope is optimism with a broken heart.”
Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage
“You searched through all my poets,
From Sappho through to Auden,
I saw the book fall from your hands,
As you slowly died of boredom.”
Nick Cave, Complete Lyrics 1978-2007
“And Satan sighed and shook his head, played harp amongst the flames. ‘It’s Hell up there in Heaven too, for all that that is worth. Heaven is just a lie of mine to make it Hell on Earth.”
Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel
“I was about 12 years old and I was sitting watching the television and it was some kind of talent show, you know, and on marches this monkey, this ape, in a pair of red-checked trousers with a little matching jacket holding a ukelele and it started jigging around playing it, and it was looking straight into the camera, straight at me, and I remember thinking, that's it, that'll be me, you know, that'll be me.”
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
“Stars have their moments then they die.”
Nick Cave
“Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
out of longing great wonders have been willed
they're only little tears darling let them spill
and lay your head upon my shoulder.”
Nick Cave
“Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
Out of longing great wonders have been willed”
Nick Cave, Complete Lyrics 1978-2007
“Said 2,000 years of Christian history, baby
And you ain't learned to love me yet?”
Nick Cave
tags: love
“She was given to me to put things right
And I stacked all my accomplishments beside her
Still I seemed so obselete and small
I found God and all His devils inside her
In my bed she cast the blizzard out
A mock sun blazed upon her head
So completely filled with light she was
Her shadow fanged and hairy and mad
Our love-lines grew hopelessly tangled
And the bells from the chapel went jingle-jangle”
Nick Cave

« previous 1 3 4 5 6
All Quotes | Add A Quote
And the Ass Saw the Angel And the Ass Saw the Angel
11,247 ratings
The Sick Bag Song The Sick Bag Song
2,692 ratings
King Ink King Ink
866 ratings
Faith, Hope and Carnage Faith, Hope and Carnage
7,640 ratings