Nick Cave

“I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.”

“And I kissed away a thousand tearsMy lady of the Various SorrowsSome begged, some borrowed, some stolenSome kept safe for tomorrow.”

“I look at you and you look at me and deep in our hearts babe we know it, that you weren't much of a muse, but then, I weren't much of a poet.”

“Death looms large I guess because it should. It’s the one thing that we as human beings from birth have a right to. It’s the only thing we’ve really got, and I don’t mean to sound bleak about this, but it’s a unifying factor amongst us all.”

“She was given to me to put things rightAnd I stacked all my accomplishments beside herStill I seemed so obselete and smallI found God and all His devils inside herIn my bed she cast the blizzard outA mock sun blazed upon her headSo completely filled with light she wasHer shadow fanged and hairy and madOur love-lines grew hopelessly tangledAnd the bells from the chapel went jingle-jangle”

“Into the mercy seat I climbMy head is shaved, my head is wiredAnd like a moth that triesTo enter the bright eyeI go shuffling out of lifeJust to hide in death awhileAnd anyway I never lied.”

“We sit at the gate and scratch, the gaunt fruit of passion.”

“This is how it essentially is for Bunny Junior. He loves his dad. He thinks there is no dad better, cleverer, or more capable, and he stands there beside him with a sense of pride — he's my dad — and he also, of course, stands beside him because he has nowhere else to go.”

“Es vienkārši atklāju, ka šī pasaule ir pārlieku smaga, lai tajā būtu labs," saka Bannijs, tad aizver acis un, izpūtis elpu, sastingst.”

“I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

“You ain't got no self-respect,you feel like an insectWell don't you worry buddy,cause here he comes”

“Oh, we will know, won't we?The stars will explode in the skyOh, but they don't, do they?Stars have their moment and then they die”

“I look at you and you look at me anddeep in our hearts know itThat you weren't much of a muse,but then I weren't much of a poet”

“Do you hear what I hear, babe? Does it make you feel afraid?”

“I don't 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 it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it.”

“And I wish that I was made of stoneSo that I would not have to seeA beauty impossible to defineA beauty impossible to believeA beauty impossible to endureThe blood imparted in little sipsThe smell of you still on my handsAs I bring the cup up to my lipsNo God up in the skyNo devil beneath the seaCould do the job that you did, babyOf bringing me to my knees”

“Hamlet got a gun now.”

“Humming softly with the child asleep in his arms, Sardus Swift looked to the winking stars and saw the moon - a smirk on the face of heaven - as he made his way home.”

“Then he smiles because he knows deep in his bones that his dad has gone and said something really funny probably. He kicks off his sheet and slides his feet into his slippers. Bunny sits in the living room, slumped low on the sofa, full of Geoffrey's Scotch and Poodle's cocaine.”

“Comatose, Pa's wife, the slobstress, buried an armchair beneath her bulk.”

“Out of sorrow entire worlds have been builtout of longing great wonders have been willedthey're only little tears darling let them spilland lay your head upon my shoulder.”

“Stars have their moments then they die.”

“It's like this, Bunny Boy, if you walk up to an oak tree or a bloody elm or something - you know, one of those big bastards - one with a thick, heavy trunk with giant roots that grow deep in the soil and great branches that are covered in leaves, right, and you walk up to it and give the tree a shake, well, what happens?' (...)'I really don't know, Dad,' (...)'Well, nothing bloody happens, of course!' (...) 'You can stand there shaking it till the cows come home and all that will happen is your arms will get tired. Right?'(...)'Right, Dad,' he says.(...)'But if you go up to a skinny, dry, fucked-up little tree, with a withered trunk and a few leaves clinging on for dear life, and you put your hands around it and shake the shit out of it - as we say in the trade - those bloody leaves will come flying off! Yeah?''OK, Dad,' says the boy (...)'Now, the big oak tree is the rich bastard, right, and the skinny tree is the poor cunt who hasn't got any money. Are you with me?'Bunny Junior nods.'Now, that sounds easier than it actually is, Bunny Boy. Do you want to know why?''OK, Dad.''Because every fucking bastard and his dog has got hold of the little tree and is shaking it for all that it's worth - the government, the bloody landlord, the lottery they don't have a chance in hell of winning, the council, their bloody exes, their hundred snotty-nosed brats running around because they are too bloody stupid to exercise a bit of self-control, all the useless shit they see on TV, fucking Tesco, parking fines, insurance on this and insurance on that, the boozer, the fruit machines, the bookies - every bastard and his three-legged, one-eyed, pox-riden dog are shaking this little tree,' says Bunny, clamping his hands together and making like he is throttling someone.'So what do you go and do, Dad?' says Bunny Junior.'Well, you've got to have something they think they need, you know, above all else.''And what's that, Dad?''Hope... you know... the dream. You've got to sell them the dream.”

“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.”

“When?' said the moon to the stars in the skySoon' said the wind that followed them allWho?' said the cloud that started to cryMe' said the rider as dry as a boneHow?' said the sun that melted the groundand 'Why?' said the river that refused to runand 'Where?' said the thunder without a soundHere' said the rider and took up his gunNo' said the stars to the moon in the skyNo' said the trees that started to moanNo' said the dust that blunted its eyesYes' said the rider as white as a boneNo' said the moon that rose from his sleepNo' said the cry of the dying sunNo' said the planet as it started to weepYes' said the rider and laid down his gun”

“...because once you've got one scar on your face or your heart, its only a matter of time before someone gives you another - and another - until a day doesn't go by when you aren't being bashed senseless, nor a town that you haven't been run out of, and you get to be such a goddamn mess that finally it doesn't feel right unless you're getting the Christ beaten out of you - amd within a year of that first damming fall, those first down borne fists, your first run out, you wind up with flies buzzing around your eyes, back at the same place, the same town, deader than when you left, bobbiong around in the swill - a dirty deadbeat whore in a roadside ditch. But a little part of you deosn't die. A little part of you lives on. And you make an orphan of that corrupt and contemtible part, dumping it right smack in the laps of the ones who first robbed you of your sweetness, for it is the wicked fruit of their crimes, it is their blood, their sin, it belongs there, this child of blood, this spawn of sin...”

“Through these days Bunny made increasingly frequent and protracted visits to the bathroom, beating off with a single-minded savagery intense even by Bunny's standards. Now, sitting on the sofa with a large Scotch, his cock feels and looks like something that has been involved in a terrible accident - a cartoon hotdog, maybe, that has made an unsuccessful attempt to cross a busy road.The boy sits beside him and the two of them are locked in a parenthesis of mutual zonkedness. Bunny Junior stares blankly at the encyclopedia open in his lap. His father watches the television, smokes his fag and drinks his whisky, like an automaton. After a time, Bunny turns his head and looks at his son and clocks the way he stares at his weird encyclopedia. He sees him but he can't really believe he is there. What does this kid want? What is he supposed to do with him? Who is he? Bunny feels like an extinct volcano, lifeless and paralysed. Yeah, he thinks, I feel like an extinct volcano - with a weird little kid to look after and a mangled sausage for a dick.”

“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.”

“Listen, ah don't wanna speak ill of the dead but have ah told you that mah mother was a great whopping whale of a cunt? Well she was precisely that - a great whopping whale of a hog's cunt with a dirty maggot for a brain.”

“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've always had an obligation to creation, above all.”

“And I know why our friendship must be kept a secret. Or they will kill You like they killed You in the Bible. And then we could not be together. If not for them we would live in this valley together. As best friends. But we must be careful, Jesus. I think I would die if anything happened to You...' - she cried ah think, for ah could hear her little sobs as she spoke - '...just close my eyes and die.' And she let fall a heavy tear, and it passed through the slats and exploded upon mah face, just below the right cheek. And as the droplet began to roll, ah caught it with mah tongue. And ah was shocked momentarily by that tear's sweetness, having known them only as bitter things - only bitter things - always bitter things.”

“Mummy was a swine: a scum-cunted, likkered-up, brain-sick swine. She was lazy and slothful and dirty and belligerent and altogether evil. Ma was a soak - a drunk - a piss-eyed hell-bag with a taste for the homebrew.”

“People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.”

“I just found this world a hard place to be good in,’ says Bunny, then he closes his eyes and, with an expiration of breath, goes still.”

“Said 2,000 years of Christian history, baby And you ain't learned to love me yet?”

“I've got some words of wisdom.”

“I don't believe in an interventionist GodBut I know, darling, that you doBut if I did I would kneel down and ask HimNot to intervene when it came to youNot to touch a hair on your headTo leave you as you areAnd if He felt He had to direct youThen direct you into my armsInto my arms, O LordInto my arms, O LordInto my arms, O LordInto my armsAnd I don't believe in the existence of angelsBut looking at you I wonder if that's trueBut if I did I would summon them togetherAnd ask them to watch over youTo each burn a candle for youTo make bright and clear your pathAnd to walk, like Christ, in grace and loveAnd guide you into my armsInto my arms, O LordInto my arms, O LordInto my arms, O LordInto my armsAnd I believe in LoveAnd I know that you do tooAnd I believe in some kind of pathThat we can walk down, me and youSo keep your candlew burningAnd make her journey bright and pureThat she will keep returningAlways and evermoreInto my arms, O LordInto my arms, O LordInto my arms, O LordInto my arms”

“I was about 12 years old and I was sitting watching the television and it was some kind of talent show, you know, and on marches this monkey, this ape, in a pair of red-checked trousers with a little matching jacket holding a ukelele and it started jigging around playing it, and it was looking straight into the camera, straight at me, and I remember thinking, that's it, that'll be me, you know, that'll be me.”

“So we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop) Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets, we've shunned them from the greasy-grind The poor little things, they look so sad and old as they mount us from behind I ask them to desist and to refrain And then we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop)Rosary clutched in his hand, he died with tubes up his nose And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals chanted his name in code We shook our fists at the punishing rain And we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop) He said everything is messed up around here, everything is banal and jejune There is a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me in this idiot constituency of the moon Well, he knew exactly who to blame And we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop) Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix! Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!(Doop doop doop doop dooop) Well, I go guruing down the street, young people gather round my feet Ask me things, but I don't know where to start They ignite the power-trail ssstraight to my father's heart And once again I call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...)We call upon the author to explain Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought? I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker, it's fucked up and he is a fucker But what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain I call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...) Oh rampant discrimination, mass poverty, third world debt, infectious diseease Global inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions Well, it does in your brain And we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...) Now hang on, my friend Doug is tapping on the window (Hey Doug, how you been?) Brings me back a book on holocaust poetry complete with pictures Then tells me to get ready for the rain And we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...) I say prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best! He wrote like wet papier mache, went the Heming-way weirdly on wings and with maximum pain We call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...) Down in my bolthole I see they've published another volume of unreconstructed rubbish "The waves, the waves were soldiers moving". Well, thank you, thank you, thank you And again I call upon the author to explain Yeah, we call upon the author to explain Prolix! Prolix! There's nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!”

“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.”

“Found in a small stone cave bitten from the roadside, stitchless save for his great outsized boots and a plague of flies, fat on the human scrappage of dinners long past, Toad squatted in the slitted stomach of a warm child, eating loudly the face of her hapless, headless father, who sat a good foot off the ground impaled up the ass on a pointed post.”

“God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowel-less being of the Testaments - the vehement glory-monger, 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.”

“But if you're gonna dine with them cannibalsSooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .”

“Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.”

“Samuel: What's a misanthrope? Two Bob: A misanthrope is a bugger who hates every other bugger. Samuel: Are we misanthropes? Arthur: Lord no! We're family. ”

“If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!”