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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

Getting Older

Impact

Myself

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. But yeah, even rock-n-roll has a lot of rubbish, really bad music. "

" At some point you start seeing the difference between what you really want, and what is your priority order. I feel that today I know what I want. That's the problem with perspective, as well as focus and concentration. "

" I see it as my duty in some way is to be out in the world as an Australian putting forward what I consider to be authentic Australian music. "

" I don't think Hollywood makes many good films anymore. How many directors can you really trust to have an artistic vision, not a corporate vision or a watered-down communal one? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Nick Cave

You

Suits

" 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. "

" Most of my ideals and stuff really come from my mother. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things. "

" 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 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 used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I'm kind of old-school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it. But I also love listening to audio books. "

" If you took love out of the equation, I wouldn't know what else to write about. "