Song Quotes by Nick Cave

I would hate to think my songs were giving advice to people.

— Nick Cave

I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.

— Nick Cave

The way I take in the world is by seeing it; that is very much evident in the songs that I write.

— Nick Cave

There are times when I think I can sing it better, but usually I find that I can't.

— Nick Cave

I always thought my records were number one; it's just the charts didn't think so.

— Nick Cave

When you're talking about rock n' roll, myth-making is what it's all about.

— Nick Cave

I write hate lyrics really well. It's not every day you can use them, really.

— Nick Cave

You can't trust an artist that just makes good records.

— Nick Cave

Self-editing is the way I write. Ten verses of a song and it's finished. Then we start playing it and if I…

— Nick Cave

The songs that I like are the ones that you can't visualize, that are just cries from the heart - those very…

— Nick Cave

“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

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point…

— Nick Cave

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.…

— Nick Cave

I want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone's little finger and break it…

— Nick Cave

What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure…

— Nick Cave

My music has to do with beauty, and it's intended to, if not lift the spirits, then be a kind of a…

— Nick Cave

There's that kind of song, "Whoah baby, I love you," which doesn't have a visual element, but a very strong emotional element,…

— Nick Cave

I know when I sit with my band members and we're playing back a song that we've done, I know that they're…

— Nick Cave

Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like…

— Nick Cave

There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing…

— Nick Cave

The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle…

— Nick Cave

As people buy less and less records, it's become more and more important for me to spend more and more on them…

— Nick Cave

The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn't,…

— Nick Cave

Songs need to have the ability to change and to grow for sure. They take on lives of their own. Some songs…

— Nick Cave

The reason I've gotten into script-writing, which was accidental to begin with, was that I found it was a far more effective…

— Nick Cave

“The boy will grow older, and over time there will be other songs – not many – ten or maybe twenty in…

— Nick Cave

I don't write happy songs. Who does? I don't know anybody who writes happy songs, really.

— Nick Cave

I'm unable to really write the kind of song that doesn't have a visual element, which most songs don't.

— Nick Cave

Sometimes the song isn't strong enough to contain the fiction, because memories are fictions.

— Nick Cave

Songwriting, I have to take myself away from everybody to do. It's an unsightly act.

— Nick Cave

I've always hated narrative songs. I hate those songs where, basically, it's an unfolding of a story.

— Nick Cave

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

— Nick Cave

The love song must be born into the realm of the irrational, absurd, the distracted, the melancholic, the obsessive, the insane for…

— Nick Cave

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in…

— Nick Cave

Early on I realized when you write a song about someone, it flatters them on some level, and gives you a lot…

— Nick Cave

It's very important that the music has a sense of adventure to it, and that it's done by the seat of your…

— Nick Cave

I've always done a lot of research and stuff around the songs that I write so there are pages and pages of…

— Nick Cave

I write songs in batches and then record them and then can't write again for ages. I try and build one song…

— Nick Cave

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

— Nick Cave

I don't like those songs where you have to listen to a story to get into them. I don't want to have…

— Nick Cave