Cave: "My records are basically a litany of complaints against the world, and I'm quite like that in real life as well."

Cave: "I am not interested in anything that doesn't have a genuine heart to it. You've got to have soul in the hole. If that isn't there, I don't see the point."

Cave: "I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way."

Cave: "I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way."

Cave: "I've spent my life butting my head against other people's lack of imagination."

Cave: "The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else."

Cave: "You can't trust an artist that just makes good records."

Cave: "Getting married, for me, was the best thing I ever did. I was suddenly beset with an immense sense of release, that we have something more important than our separate selves, and that is the marriage. There's immense happiness that can come from working towards that."

Cave: "Texting is apocalyptic on some level. It's a reduction of things."

Cave: "An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany."

Cave: "My music has to do with beauty, and it's intended to, if not lift the spirits, then be a kind of a balm to the spirits."

Cave: "I don't have any authority to talk about the domestic policies of America. But as an outsider, I am mystified by the fact that you are encouraged to buy a gun, but if you use it for the purpose that it is expressly designed for, you get the death penalty. That aspect of America is kind of mystifying."

Cave: "I think it's a part of us as human beings that we search outside of ourselves for meaning."

Cave: "The work ethic at art school is completely different than the work ethic amongst people who get into music. People who paint, it's an honorable thing to spend all day and all night in front of your canvas - that is the romantic vision of the painter."

Cave: "I would hate to think my songs were giving advice to people."

Cave: "My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that."

Cave: "I'm kind of old-school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it."