Faith, Hope and Carnage Quotes

“Hope is optimism with a broken heart.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“[T]he luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can’t help it.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“Vulnerability is essential to spiritual and creative growth. Finding enormous strength through vulnerability. You're being open to whatever happens, including failure and shame. The two are connected, maybe - vulnerability and freedom.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“There’s a vegetarian takeaway place in Brighton called Infinity, where I would eat sometimes. I went there the first time I’d gone out in public after Arthur had died. There was a woman who worked there and I was always friendly with her, just the normal pleasantries, but I liked her. I was standing in the queue and she asked me what I wanted and it felt a little strange, because there was no acknowledgement of anything. She treated me like anyone else, matter-of-factly, professionally. She gave me my food and I gave her the money and – ah, sorry, it’s quite hard to talk about this – as she gave me back my change, she squeezed my hand. Purposefully. It was such a quiet act of kindness. The simplest and most articulate of gestures, but, at the same time, it meant more than all that anybody had tried to tell me – you know, because of the failure of language in the face of catastrophe. She wished the best for me, in that moment. There was something truly moving to me about that simple, wordless act of compassion.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“The more overtly unshakeable someone’s beliefs are, the more diminished they seem to become, because they have stopped questioning, and the not-questioning can sometimes be accompanied by an attitude of moral superiority. The belligerent dogmatism of the current cultural moment is a case in point. A bit of humility wouldn’t go astray.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“We’re often led to believe that getting older is in itself somehow a betrayal of our idealistic younger self, but sometimes I think it might be the other way around. Maybe the younger self finds it difficult to inhabit its true potential because it has no idea what that potential is. It is a kind of unformed thing running scared most of the time, frantically trying to build its sense of self – This is me! Here I am! – in any way that it can. But then time and life come along, and smash that sense of self into a million pieces. And then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“And then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others. You somehow grow into the fullness of your humanity, form your own character, become a proper person – I don’t know, someone who has become a part of things, not someone separated from or at odds with the world. You mean you get old. Yes, Seán, old and free!”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“For me, vulnerability is essential to spiritual and creative growth, whereas being invulnerable means being shut down, rigid, small. My experience of creating music and writing songs is finding enormous strength through vulnerability. You’re being open to whatever happens, including failure and shame. There’s certainly a vulnerability to that, and an incredible freedom. […] I think to be truly vulnerable is to exist adjacent to collapse or obliteration. In that place we can feel extraordinarily alive and receptive to all sorts of things, creatively and spiritually. It can be perversely a point of advantage, not disadvantage as one might think. It is a nuanced place that feels both dangerous and teeming with potential. It is the place where the big shifts can happen. The more time you spend there, the less worried you become of how you will be perceived or judged, and that is ultimately where the freedom is.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“I don’t fear death. It’s more that I just don’t want to lose any more people, because I love them and love having them around. But, of course, we can’t make these cosmic covenants: we can’t bargain with God. It’s like asking the world to stop turning. So you learn to make peace with the idea of death as best you can. Or rather you reconcile yourself to the acute jeopardy of life, and you do this by acknowledging the value in things, the precious nature of things, and savouring the time we have together in this world. You learn that the binding agent of the world is love.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“To be awed. To experience a communal sense of awe. I can feel it on stage and see it in people’s eyes. And I experience it too. It’s certainly something I have felt many, many times at other artists’ concerts. It’s about reaching an essential and shared state through music – sometimes for a moment, sometimes for an entire concert. We’ve all experienced that. Not just a physical release, although there is that, too, but to be held by an artist at the crucial moment of expression – to be awed, second by second, at the way a song or piece of music unfolds, to be held on the edge of tears by the drama of it all, and to be, as an audience member, an essential participant in the drama itself. That is a wonderful thing. […] So thank God, quite literally, for music, because it’s one of the last remaining places, beyond raw nature, that people can feel awed by something happening in real time, that feeling of reverence and wonder. […] These are sacred moments.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“There is a great deficit in the language around grief. It’s not something we are practised at as a society, because it is too hard to talk about and, more importantly, it’s too hard to listen to. So many grieving people just remain silent, trapped in their own secret thoughts, trapped in their own minds, with their only form of company being the dead themselves.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“But, in a way, that sense of death being present, and all those wild, traumatized feelings that went with it, ultimately gave us this weird, urgent energy. Not at first, but in time. It was an energy that allowed us to do anything we wanted to do. Ultimately, it opened up all kinds of possibilities and a strange reckless power came out of it. It was as if the worst had happened and nothing could hurt us, and all our ordinary concerns were little more than indulgences. There was a freedom in that.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“I think people can do both terrible things and wonderful things when faced with the true understanding of their own powerlessness, vulnerability and lack of control.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“I think the constant articulation of my own grief and hearing other people’s stories was very healing, because those who grieve know. They are the ones to tell the story. They have gone to the darkness and returned with the knowledge. They hold the information that other grieving people need to hear. And most astonishing of all, we all go there, in time.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“I also believe our positive individual actions, our small acts of kindness, reverberate through the world in ways we will never know. I guess what I am saying is – we mean something. Our actions mean something. We are of value. I think there is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things – the impossibility of things – and recognise the evident value in doing that, and summon the courage it requires to not always shrink back into the known mind.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“The creative impulse, to me, is a form of bafflement, and often feels dissonant and unsettling. It chips away at your own cherished truths about things, pushes against your own sense of what is acceptable. It’s the guiding force that leads you to where it wants to go. It’s not the other way around. You’re not leading it.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“That perhaps grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state where the person who is grieving is the closest they will ever be to the fundamental essence of things. Because, in grief, you become deeply acquainted with the idea of human mortality. You go to a very dark place and experience the extremities of your own pain — you are taken to the very limits of suffering. As far as I can see, there is a transformative aspect to this place of suffering. We are essentially altered or remade by it. Now, this process is terrifying, but in time you return to the world with some kind of knowledge that has something to do with our vulnerability as participants in this human drama. Everything seems to fragile and precious and heightened, and the world and the people in it seem to endangered, and yet so beautiful. To me it feels that, in this dark place, the idea of a God feels more present or maybe more essential. It actually feels like grief and God are somehow intertwined. It feels that, in grief, you draw closer to the veil that separates this world from the next.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“I don’t know about you, but for me there is forever a
struggle between the rational side of myself and the side that is alert to glimpses or impressions of something otherworldly. And, of course, I know
there is no coherent argument to be had here. My rational self has all the weaponry, all the big guns – reason, science, common sense, normality – and all that far outweighs the side of me that only has suspicions and hints and signs of something else, something mysterious and quietly spoken. But, even still, it feels, under the circumstances, that to dismiss the existence of these things that live beyond our reasonable selves outright is, at best, ungenerous. Don’t you think? I mean, I don’t blindly succumb to these feelings, but still I remain watchful for that promise. This is how I have chosen to live my life – in uncertainty, and by doing so to be open to the
divine possibility of things, whether it exists or not. I believe this gives my life, and especially my work, meaning and potential and soul, too, beyond what the rational world has to offer.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“But what I want to say is this: this will happen to everybody at some point - a deconstruction of the known self. It may not necessarily be a death, but there will be some kind of devastation. We see it happen to people all the time: a marriage breakdown, or a transgression that has a devastating effect on a persons, life, or health issues, or a betrayal, or a public shaming, or a separation, or someone loses their kids, or whatever it is. And it shatters them completely, into one million pieces, and it seems like there is no coming back. It’s over. But in time they put themselves together piece by piece. And the thing is, when they do that, they often find that they are a different person, a changed, more complete, more realized, more clearly drawn person. I think that’s what it is to live, really – to die in a way, and to be reborn. And sometimes it can happen many times over, that complex re-ordering of ourselves.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“my life is highly beneficial. It makes me happier, it makes my relationships with people more agreeable, and it makes me a better writer – in my opinion. So do you believe in redemption in the Christian sense? Well, I think we’re all suffering, Seán, and more often than not this suffering is a hell of our own making, it is a state of being for which we are responsible, and I have personally needed to find some kind of deliverance from that. One way I do that is to try to lead a life that has moral and religious value, and to try to look at other people, all people, as if they are valuable. I feel that when I have done something to hurt an individual, say, that the wrongdoing also affects the world at large, or even the cosmic order. I believe that what I have done is an offence to God and should be put right in some way. I also believe our positive individual actions, our small acts of kindness, reverberate through the world in ways we will never know. I guess what I am saying is – we mean something. Our actions mean something. We are of value. I think there is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things – the impossibility of things – and recognise the evident value in doing that, and summon the courage it requires to not always shrink back into the known mind.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“And, of course, if you have been fortunate enough to have been truly loved, in this world, you will also cause extraordinary pain to others when you leave it. That's the covenant of life and death, and the terrible beauty of grief.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“Sean: If so, that kind of magic thinking is a strategy for survival that a lot of people use. Some sceptics might say it is the very basis of religious belief.

Nick: Yes. Some see it as the lie at the heart of religion, but I tend to think it is the much-needed utility of religion. And the lie - if the existence of God is, in fact, a falsehood - is, in some way, irrelevant. In fact, sometimes it feels to me as if the existence of God is a detail, or a technicality, so unbelievably rich are the benefits of a devotional life. Stepping into a church, listening to religious thinkers, reading scripture, meditating, praying - all these religious activities eased the way back into the world for me. Those who discount them as falsities or superstitious nonsense, or worse, a collective mental feebleness are made of sterner stuff than me. I grabbed at anything I could get my hands on and, since doing so, I've never let them go.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“Sean: When you started to delve into the New Testament, how influential was that on the way you wrote songs? I'm thinking particularly of The Boatman's Call (in 1997), in which there was a definite change of tone and, indeed, a different kind of song.

Nick: I think so, yes. When I reacquainted myself with the Gospels, in my thirties, I found the language so beautiful, it touched a need in me. It seeped into everything, especially my songs. There is nothing quite like the Gospels in literature - and the great human drama at its centre, the story of Jesus.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“Sean: But, hang on, are you saying atheism - or secularism - is an affliction? And that you equate it with cynicism? I mean, come on, non-believers can have a sense of wonder at the world - with nature, the universe, with the wonders of science, philosophy and even the everyday.

Nick: No, I am not saying secularism is an affliction in itself. I just don't think it has done a very good job of addressing the questions that religion is well practised at answering. Religion, at its best, can serve as a kind of shepherding force that holds communities together - it is there, within a community, that people feel more attached to each other and the world. It's where they find a deeper meaning.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“Well, grief can lead some people to dark places from where they simply never return. I have seen it often. People constricting around an absence, growing hard and mad and furious at the world, and never recovering. There is nothing to lead them from the abyss. And beyond that, too, I think the point-blank rejection of all spiritual matters as mere nonsense has its own problems. I'm talking about the outright rejection of religion by some who basically see it as a kind of inherent evil. That stance is a denial of all the potential good religion brings: the comfort, the succour, the redemption, the community. This thinking can bring its own kind of nothingness - not always, of course, but often. And, as we are seeing, people find a version of religion elsewhere, in tribalism, in their identity, in politics, for God's sake, in possessions. Look at our glorious secular world as it stands today. To me, secularism can also feel like a kind of hardening around an absence.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“I had a kind of spiritual envy, a longing for belief in the face of the impossibility of belief that addressed a fundamental emptiness inside me. There was always a yearning.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“mean chaos as a bounty of competing ideas racing around in your head. Maybe what happens when you get older is that you don’t have the same battles in the brain as when you were younger, when you just had shit flying all over the place, where you were grabbing at everything and were just so amazed at the workings of your own mind! Instead, you become more focused and just carve away all the non-essential stuff.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“Well, whatever you think about the decline of organised religion – and I do accept that religion has a lot to answer for – it took with it a regard for the sacredness of things, for the value of humanity, in and of itself. This regard is rooted in a humility towards one’s place within the world – an understanding of our flawed nature. We are losing that understanding, as far as I can see, and it’s often being replaced by self-righteousness and hostility.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“The condition of the soul can be treated independently of the situation one finds oneself in.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“My life is lived with a different intensity, not the burning intensity of youth. It’s something else a kind of spiritual audacity…an audacity in the face of things…a kind of reckless refusal to submit to the condition of the world.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage