When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.
— Nick Cave
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.
The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.
I think it's a part of us as human beings that we search outside of ourselves for meaning.
What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
Despite what people might think, I'm not interested in being dark all the time. I'm actually searching for some kind of light, and I'm always very happy when I can achieve that.
I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know what to do with.
The more information you have, the more human our heroes become and consequently the less mysterious and godlike. They need to be godlike.
I don't write happy songs. Who does? I don't know anybody who writes happy songs, really.
I became a script writer with absolutely no idea of how to write a script whatsoever. I still feel a bit of an outsider in that regard. If I can maintain that approach to screenwriting, it can continue to be enjoyable.
If you took love out of the equation, I wouldn't know what else to write about.
Songs you can dip in and out of, but a book... well, it can overpower you.
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.
I am not interested in anything that doesn't have a genuine heart to it. You've got to have soul in the hole. If that isn't there, I don't see the point.
Most screen violence is tedious.
When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?'
I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.
When you're making a film, there are so many people involved that you get opinions and notes from people and you don't even know who they are. I find that quite difficult and it wears you down.
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.
I've always hated narrative songs. I hate those songs where, basically, it's an unfolding of a story.
Texting is apocalyptic on some level. It's a reduction of things.
I'm not in the business of telling people what to do. I'm much more in the business of describing things, situations and stuff like that and leaving them out there, and you can make up your minds about them.
After a while, you just don't do things you don't wanna do - that's the great freedom you get, the older you get. You learn what to do and what not to do, and what will be a waste of time and what won't be a waste of time.
As Australians, we see the law as inherently bad. We have a real inherent distaste for authority in our makeup.
The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
I consider myself to be first and foremost a comic writer. The way I entertain myself - especially in those long and grim hours in the office - is to write stuff I find funny.
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.
Self-editing is the way I write. Ten verses of a song and it's finished. Then we start playing it and if I see that it's too long, I'll start cutting.
People are always surprised to see clues to my being a normal kind of guy. As if I'm somehow letting the team down.
I won't go into the details, but I ready myself for the day. I am a high-maintenance type of guy.
Songwriting, I have to take myself away from everybody to do. It's an unsightly act.
The only person who can say they're happy getting old is someone who isn't actually old yet. Every day, I get less and less happy about that idea.
I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.
Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff.
The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new.
Personally I find the story of Christ incredibly moving.
Early on I realized when you write a song about someone, it flatters them on some level, and gives you a lot of room to move within a relationship. A song can kind of get the girl, for sure.
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 and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.
The songs that I like are the ones that you can't visualize, that are just cries from the heart - those very straight, direct songs that make rock & roll music so wonderful.
The work ethic at art school is completely different than the work ethic amongst people who get into music. People who paint, it's an honorable thing to spend all day and all night in front of your canvas - that is the romantic vision of the painter.
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.
My music has to do with beauty, and it's intended to, if not lift the spirits, then be a kind of a balm to the spirits.
My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.
I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.
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.
If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'
Accessible local libraries are vital to communities and to children.
Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.
It's always a pleasure on a personal note for me to come back to Australia.
