Nick Cave Quotes

A lot of people feel that the realm of poetry and the realm of the lyric is personal feeling and should rise above politics, which, in fact, good poetry has never done.

Poetry is what happens when an anxiety meets a technique.

Lyrically, I personally lean towards venting.

I think poetry was always where I went to deal with my deepest feelings.

I've always wanted to be a songwriter and a storyteller and somebody who conveys a feeling to the listener or the viewer.

I often say that I want to write like Tupac rapped. I could listen to his album, and within a few minutes, I could go from thinking deeply to laughing to crying to partying.

Writing dark poetry was always my escape.

So what comes naturally to me is writing lyrics and writing songs and telling stories.

I never wanted to write really cheesy pop lyrics - like, 'baby, baby, the sun is shining' - that's not something that interests me personally. I'm always wanting to write something that has some kind of meaning.

When you write really good lyrics - and sometimes I did! - they are just a joy to sing.

The crafting of lyrics is really a task, and when it comes to street culture, I don't feel like anyone else articulates it better than me.

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don't mean that everyone can write poetry - it's an art, a craft, it requires enormous commitment like any art. But there's a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It's the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.

Poetry is a break for freedom.

Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant to be looked at for all time.

Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.

Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.

Poetry is the most bodily of the arts.

Those of us who make up poems have agreed not to say what the pain is.

Poetry fettered fetters the human race.

For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type.

He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize

Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.

The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either.

I have never considered myself a poet. Therefore, I am not a rival of anyone, and I do not consider anybody my rival.