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In Getting Older, I Find Myself Becoming Progressively More Ineffectual In A Lot Of Different Ways, And Part Of That Is Down To No Longer Having The Youthful Feeling That What You're Doing Has Any True Impact.

-Nick Cave

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In Getting Older, I

Nick Cave

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In Getting Older, I Find Myself Becoming Progressively More Ineffectual In A Lot Of Different Ways, And Part Of That Is Down To No Longer Having The Youthful Feeling That What You're Doing Has Any True Impact.

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Most Screen Violence Is Tedious.

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I Love Performing. I Can Get To Be That Person I Always Wanted To Be - Godlike.

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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

'inspiration' Is A Word Used By People Who Aren't Really Doing Anything.

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I Write Songs In Batches And Then Record Them And Then Can't Write Again For Ages. I Try And Build One Song Upon Another, They May Not Obviously Look Inter-related But Often One Song Acts As A Springboard Into Another.

The Artistic Process Seems To Be Mythologized Quite A Lot Into Something Far Greater Than It Actually Is. It Is Just Hard Labor.

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There Are Times When I Think I Can Sing It Better, But Usually I Find That I Can't.

Jesus Christ Was The Biggest Blight On The Human Race, He Was. And All Them Socialists And Communists - Second Rate Christianity.

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The More Settled I've Become, The More Problematic My Characters Have Become. There Was A Period When I Wrote Sensitive And Gentle Songs And These Came At A Time When Life Was At Its Most Destructive. I Think You Write About What You Need, On Some Level.

Being A Parent Can Make You A Horrible Person At Times, Because You're Pushed To The Limit Constantly.

Horrible Person

Guns Are Part Of The American Psyche, Aren't They? This Is Collateral Damage For Having A Wild West Mentality. It's Intrinsic To The American Psyche. It's Never Going To Change.

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Musicians Are At The Bottom Of The Creative Pyramid And Authors Are At The Top, And Many People Think It's Unacceptable For Someone To Attempt To Jump From The Bottom To The Top Of The Pyramid.

L.a. Is Full Of Screenwriters. I Don't Know Why. On Many Levels, It's Such A Thankless Occupation.

I Don't Know, Maybe Australian Humour Isn't Supposed To Be Funny. It's As Dry As The Sahara, And I Think People Miss That.

The Editing Of A Song Is Largely What Makes The Song For Me And I Think That Actually If I Had Started Going Like 'i Want You To Burn' It Would Have Pinned That Song Down To A Particular Thing And Made That Song A Smaller Idea Than What It Is. By Leaving That Off It's Much More Open, Broader.

At The End, We're Kind Of Observers - Creative People, I Mean. I Feel Like An Observer, And I'm Pretty Much Able To Step Out Of Things And See How Things Are Playing Out.

Sound Doesn't Always Have To Be Heard. Sound Can Also Be Created By How A Pattern Is Set Up On A Surface- How It Moves Across The Surface, How Light Reflects The Surface [and] Can Generate A Feeling. Sound Can Also Be Through Feeling, Through Color, Through Texture.

The More Information You Have, The More Human Our Heroes Become And Consequently The Less Mysterious And Godlike. They Need To Be Godlike.

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.

We As Visual Artists Need To Continue To Be Renegades And Say, "yes I Am Here To Do A Project, But What Is The Social Service?"

In The Hysterical Technocracy Of Modern Music, Sorrow Is Sent To The Back Of The Class Where It Sits, Pissing Its Pants In Mortal Terror.

I'm Very Happy To Hear That My Work Inspires Writers And Painters. It's The Most Beautiful Compliment, The Greatest Reward. Art Should Always Be An Exchange.

I Feel Like I've Spent The Last Five Years Of My Life On The Road. It Hasn't Affected My Songs But It's Probably Affected Everything Else About Me. Obviously, The More You Travel, The Wilder The Things That Keep Happening To You, The More Likely It Is You'll Get Complete Strangers Knocking On Your Hotel Room Door.

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.

I Lost My Innocence With Johnny Cash. I Used To Watch The Johnny Cash Show On Television In Wangaratta When I Was About 9 Or 10 Years Old. At That Stage I Had Really No Idea About Rock'n'roll. I Watched Him And From That Point I Saw That Music Could Be An Evil Thing, A Beautiful, Evil Thing.

If You Got A Trumpet, Get On Your Feet, Brother, And Blow It!

Stars Have Their Moments Then They Die.

It Was About The Preciousness Of That, And How They Viewed Those Birds As Art, As Something Valuable. I Didn't Care One Way Or Another Back Then, But Now, Thinking About My Grandparents - Who Are Still Alive But Getting Older - I See The Birds As Sort Of Time Capsules. Now I Go Home During The Holidays And They Hold A Lot Of Weight In Terms Of Nostalgia And Memory. Now They Mean Everything.

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.

Sorrow's Child Grieves Not What Has Passed, But All The Past Still Yet To Come.

The Secret To Longevity In The Music Business Is To Change, And To Be Able To Change. [...] An Actor Has To Assume Other People's Identities. A Rock Star Doesn't Need To Do That. [...] But Change Is Important.

I'm Hugely Self-critical In The Morning.

You're One Microscopic Cog In His Catastrophic Plan.

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.

Writing Screenplays Makes Me A Better Musician Because It Clears My Head. After Writing A Movie, I Go Running Back To Music As Fast As I Can.

It's Very Important That The Music Has A Sense Of Adventure To It, And That It's Done By The Seat Of Your Pants. There's A Kind Of Nervy Element About It.

Songs Need To Have The Ability To Change And To Grow For Sure. They Take On Lives Of Their Own. Some Songs Just Don't Have That Capacity. They're Locked Within A Period Of Time. And As Soon As You Take Them Out Of That Period Of Time, They Die Very Quickly.

What I Want People To Recognize Is That We Have To Keep Working Together And Take Charge Because We All Have The Same Story.

Working Together

And She Moves Among The Sparrows. And She Floats Upon The Breeze. She Moves Among The Flowers. She Moves Something Deep Inside Of Me

I'm A Believer. I Don't Go To Church. I Don't Belong To Any Particular Religion, But I Do Believe In God. I Couldn't Write What I Write About And Be Creative Without A Certain Form Of Belief.

When I’m Singing “deanna,” For Example, Which I Sing Pretty Much Every Night, It Brings Forward A Kind Of Imagined, Romanticized Lie About This Particular Person, Which I Find Really Comforting And Exciting To Sing About.

People Often Can't Separate, Or Can't Understand, That To Be Funny Is To Be Serious; It's A Way Of Pulling People In And Not Scaring Them Off. I Think A Lot Of The Funny Stuff, Underneath It, There's A Deep Anxiety Going On.

Cynicism And Defensiveness Are Two Things Constantly Levelled At Me. Look, I've Got Time For People, I'm Good Mannered. I Usually Find That When You're Down, Nobody Has A Bloody Minute For You. If I Was A Nobody, You Wouldn't Even Talk To Me. People, In General, Don't Like You Being Upfront And Civil. They Hate You For It. They Label You A Cynic 'cos You're Reasonable.

Everybody Tends To Overplay Live. That's Just The Nature Of Playing Live. And That Can Be Great, But It Can Also Kill Something That's Special, And Intimate, About A Recorded Version Of A Song. You Find Out Very Quickly Which Songs You Can Play, And Which Songs You Do Damage To By Playing Them Live.

I've Watched 'oprah Winfrey.' And I'm Proud. I Don't Care What Anybody Says! I Don't Know Whether I've Watched It. I've Been In The Room While It's Been On.

Into The Mercy Seat I Climb My Head Is Shaved, My Head Is Wired And Like A Moth That Tries To Enter The Bright Eye I Go Shuffling Out Of Life Just To Hide In Death Awhile And Anyway I Never Lied.

Well, As Anyone Who Actually Writes Knows, If You Sit Down And Are Prepared, Then The Ideas Come. There's A Lot Of Different Ways People Explain That, But, You Know, I Find That If I Sit Down And I Prepare Myself, Generally Things Get Done.

When I Start To Write A Song, I Initially Fall Into Patterns And Creative Habits That Are Familiar, And Because They're Familiar, They Sound Convincing. It's Important For Me To Not Pursue Those Ideas, Because I've Already Done Them, But To Find Ideas That Are Different And Feel Strange To Write And Disconcerting To Write.

The Writer Who Refuses To Explore The Darker Regions Of The Heart Will Never Be Able To Write Convincingly About The Wonder, The Magic And The Joy Of Love For Just As Goodness Cannot Be Trusted Unless It Has Breathed The Same Air As Evil.

Most People Wait For The Muse To Turn Up. That's Terribly Unreliable. I Have To Sit Down And Pursue The Muse By Attempting To Work.

That's What I Like About Watching A Movie: You Enter An Imagined World That's More Interesting, More Engaging Than Your Own. Or Less Painful Than Your Own.

But If You're Gonna Dine With Them Cannibals Sooner Or Later, Darling, You're Gonna Get Eaten . . .

The Band Is A Living, Breathing Thing. It Grows In The Same Way We Do As Human Beings And If It Doesn't, It Dies. It's Important To Feed The Organism, And One Way Of Doing That Is To Set Musical Challenges That Keep It Alive.

The Blues Is Instilled In Every Musical Cell That Floats Around Your Body.

The Body Becomes The Carrier For The Work. It's Not Really About The Physical Body; It Really Becomes The Apparatus That Carries And Moves The Work. I Don't Really Consider The Body As Much; I Look At It As A Tool.

Some Are Exploring The World Through The Subconscious. I've Done That On Occasions For Various Reasons, Whether It Be Illness Or Self Abuse, Or Whatever. Once Things Start To Look Grotesque I Don't Write Them Or Sing Them. I Couldn't Write Them - Making Nightmares Into Living Daylight...the Minute It Gets Dark I Shoot Back, Retreat.

I've Always Worn Suits. To Me They're A Very Practical Kind Of Thing To Wear. You Put One On And Don't Really Have To Think About What You're Going To Wear.

Texting Is Apocalyptic On Some Level. It's A Reduction Of Things.

You Write A Scene, And It Works Or It Doesn't. It's Immediate.

I'm Not A Misogynist, So You Can Dispense With That. I Think I've Done Wonders For The Feminist Movement.

What I Think About When I Frequent The Museum Of Natural History, The Metropolitan [museum Of Art], And I Look At These Artifacts That Are Taken Out Of Context And How We're Forced To View Them As Objects, As Relics, As Sculpture- Static. But What's Interesting Is What It Allows Me To Do In My Head In Terms Of Imagining What The Possibilities Are Or Imagining The Role In Which They Played Within A Particular Culture Which I'm Fascinated By.

It's Always A Risky Business Inviting Somebody On Stage. You Never Know What They're Going To Do. I Try To Avoid Letting People Join Me Onstage Because It Can Be Very Distracting, And Overly Theatrical.

I Still Feel Very Much An Imposter In The Whole Music Scene, Which I'm Quite Happy About To Be Honest.

You Know, An Idea Is Just An Idea. There Seems To... The Kind Of Epiphanies That You Have, Like The Little Sudden Bursts Of Light, They're Very Small And They're Very Short And It's The Pursuit Of The Idea That's The Important Thing. . . . I Know A Lot Of People Who Have Way Better Ideas Than I Do That-much More Frequently Than I Do That Just Can't Sit Down And Actually Do It. Ideas Are Such Are A Little Overrated Really; It's The Work Behind The Idea That's The Important Thing.

The Older I Get, The More I Feel Those Kinds Of Ghosts - Especially The Women In My Life - Moving Out Of The Shadows A Bit More And Becoming More Present In My Life.

The Rock Star Is Dying. And It's A Small Tragedy. Rock Stars Have Blogs Now. I Have No Use For That Kind Of Rock Star.

A Is For Answering All Your Prayers, N Is For Knowing That Your Loverman's Going To Be The Answer.

I'm A Kind Of Hard-wired Pessimist. I Can't Help But See The World In A Certain Kind Of Way.

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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