"At some point you start seeing the difference between what you really want, and what is your priority order. I feel that today I know what I want. That's the problem with perspective, as well as focus and concentration"
About this Quote
Nick Cave is good at making ambivalence sound like an ethic. Here, he’s not selling the self-help fantasy that clarity solves life; he’s admitting that clarity can be its own kind of trap. The first move is brutally adult: wanting isn’t the hard part. The hard part is noticing that your life is already a ranked list of commitments, habits, obligations, and appetites - a “priority order” that quietly votes against your stated desires. Cave frames that gap as something you only “start seeing” with time, which is a musician’s version of middle-age: the moment when the story you tell about yourself collides with the calendar.
Then comes the sharp turn: “today I know what I want. That’s the problem.” The punchline is a little perverse. Knowing what you want narrows the world, raises the stakes, and makes compromise feel like betrayal. Perspective is supposed to be wisdom; Cave treats it as a spotlight that also burns. Focus and concentration, virtues in any creative mythology, become double-edged tools: they can produce a record, a poem, a life with shape - but they also amputate everything else. You don’t just choose the work; the work chooses what you’re allowed to ignore.
In Cave’s context - decades of songwriting obsessed with loss, devotion, and meaning under pressure - this reads less like career advice than a confession about survival. Desire becomes precise, and suddenly you’re accountable to it.
Then comes the sharp turn: “today I know what I want. That’s the problem.” The punchline is a little perverse. Knowing what you want narrows the world, raises the stakes, and makes compromise feel like betrayal. Perspective is supposed to be wisdom; Cave treats it as a spotlight that also burns. Focus and concentration, virtues in any creative mythology, become double-edged tools: they can produce a record, a poem, a life with shape - but they also amputate everything else. You don’t just choose the work; the work chooses what you’re allowed to ignore.
In Cave’s context - decades of songwriting obsessed with loss, devotion, and meaning under pressure - this reads less like career advice than a confession about survival. Desire becomes precise, and suddenly you’re accountable to it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Improvement |
|---|
More Quotes by Nick
Add to List
