"King Ink strolls into town... He sniffs around."
Nicholas Edward Cave is an Australian singer, musician and writer. He is the frontman of the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Known for his baritone voice, Cave's music is characterised by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love, and violence.
"The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas. So that if you mention God, or a belief in God, in England, its almost automatically associated with that kind of thinking. Religions gotten a really bad name."
"Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite, it is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering."
"I dont 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 its fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it. But I wouldnt like to dwell on it. Perhaps you could lighten up a bit."
"The song is heroic because the song confronts death. The song is immortal and bravely stares down our own extinction. The song emerges from the spirit world with a true message: Some day I will tell you how to slay the dragon."
"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."
"My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; theres not much Im angry about that doesnt 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 peoples fates... that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot. What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"… its that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people whove stepped outside societys norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But its also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because theyre unable to fit into what a corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable"."