Nick Cave Quotes

Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life - one that requires much professionalism.

Music is not a game to me. I take it very seriously.

Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do? I mean you do.

Making music, if you're a real musician, you carry on regardless in this world.

The only time I've ever really felt envy is when I've watched people make music, which made my time living in the now-legendary Jazz Loft at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York a constant source of agony and ecstasy!

I've always sort of felt that, for me, everything's so much more about the music than the accolades.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

I love when people are coming up and they're working hard and you can see that they're really focused on the process to their music. I really dig that. As a musician, it's nice to see people who really care about the process.

My goal is to be one with the music. I just dedicate my whole life to this art.

When you are a real artist who is serious about your craft, you love good music. Period.

Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy - and it made me feel something. That's when I realized music was inside me.

The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and one reason only-he can't help doing it.

There are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because the spirit is in them, and they cannot be silent if they would, and those that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the beauty that has awakened their own admiration.

I love music so much I love what I do. I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

My music is - I don't want to say my main focus, but it's what comes most naturally to me.

Any musician who can stop may be a musician, but they're no artist. If it's in your blood, it can't stop flowing.

The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.

If you're an artist, you need to work. It doesn't matter how old you are, who you are. It doesn't matter if you're 12: if you draw, you draw. If you're 85 and you paint, you paint.

As long as I can sing and hit the notes, I want to do that.

I was never in this for the money. It's all about the passion for the music.

If you haven't got help, all you can do is make good music.

It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?

I would have found something because I love to entertain people. I had the option to take the rest of the year off. But I said the songs on my last solo album, '24 Karat Gold,' mean so much to me. I need to get out there and sing them.

I have a life and do a lot of things, and so far my work has been my life. If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I'm an artist, I hate saying that.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.