Nick Cave Quotes

My strips are not always funny, and they can be pretty grim at times, and I know I lose readers because of it, but I can't do anything about it - my work is very much connected to something I need to do in order to feel stable.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

I like playing characters with internal problems.

I really don't feel that writing is therapy.

Working on this album has been very emotional and super personal, and creating this character 'Cry Baby' helped me deal with my own insecurities.

Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am.

The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.

I'm a sucker for a screwed-up protagonist. We all have issues.

Sometimes you have to confront your demons and sometimes even let them loose to genuinely find a place where you can gain some understanding.

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.

It is very true to say that work done by writers is quite often an attempt to give solid expression to that which is bothering them... They feel they have got it right if they express the stress.

It can be really powerful to write something when you're sad.

Acting is always therapeutic.

I tend to write about my anxieties - it's what I'm afraid will happen. And I write a story working it out.

My song-writing has always been just about my life - usually my worst moments.

I've written several deeply personal songs this year, which I really love. Some of them came out of intense sadness. This has been an extremely difficult year for me.

'Scar Tissue' is the only book I've ever written when I've felt completely toxic, ill.

'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.

I've always been one of those people that, if I am angry, I just hold it in. And I always kind of, like, wrote it in a song and put it aside for myself because it helps me get it out. It's almost like exercising; it's almost like that for me.

I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It's a form of self-help.

I feel like all of my characters now take this congested situation, they clash, and from there you purge yourself.

One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.

I guess I usually write when I'm in a really intense headspace, because it's my form of self-therapy.

I was in the middle of a crossroads, which is a nice way of saying crisis, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You know the physical part. We just talked about it.

Song-writing is therapy for me. I'm a very moody person, very difficult to live with. There's a lot going on and a lot of contradictions. My life is always one step away from disaster.