Elvis Costello Quotes (Best Sayings & Song Quotes)

Well, I've had a lot of different experiences in music over the years. And not everything you do can satisfy everybody's idealised version of you.

I started with rock n' roll and...then you start to take it apart like a child with a toy and you see there's blues and there's country...Then you go back from country into American music...and you end up in Scotland and Ireland eventually.

The Internet is overrated. It's much smaller an innovation than people think it is. I don't think it's changed the way anybody makes music.

You must hold on to the sort of finger-painting aspect of music. That's something I learned, particularly from listening to Neil Young. Tom Waits is another one, because Tom's music is incredibly sophisticated and beautifully arranged, but he's using a toolbox that's unlike anybody else's.

'Content' is a word that has never sat well with me. Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling.

It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.

Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock'n'roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I've done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back.

People become so deeply attached to the sound of one period that they blow a fuse when you move on. I've heard people complain bitterly about recordings they haven't even heard.

I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.

Music is more like water than a rhinoceros. It doesn't charge madly down one path. It runs away in every direction.

The people with the most resources are the federal government. If you can invade a country halfway across the world in a matter of days, you can surely come to the aid of your own citizens in a shorter order of time.

Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song.

Living a very long time would be a very scary thing.

Somebody should clip Sting around the head and tell him to stop using that ridiculous Jamaican accent.

I find humming is very useful.

Very similar experience happened last year when we released this album, North. It was on Deutsche Grammophon, it was very, very honest. It was the most honest record I've ever written.

We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

There are a lot of things that you can like at a distance without spending a huge amount of time pondering. It's not so complicated.

I've never had any real concern about posterity. I hope some people will be sorry when I'm not here, but I'm not playing for that.

I've had an unusual life. A life far removed from most people's experience.

But there are things in Il Sogno that the methods of The Delivery Man could never achieve.

I know that when I make a record like The Delivery Man as a contrast to even Il Sogno, this is going to reach a wider audience, because it communicates in that very direct way.

Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love.

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

I've worked hard, every single day since I left school. I think I have a Protestant work ethic.

When in doubt, play track 4 - it is usually the one you want.

You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it's just going to be an obscurity.

There are five things to write songs about: I'm leaving you. You're leaving me. I want you. You don't want me. I believe in something. Five subjects, and 12 notes. For all that, we musicians do pretty well.

And I don't feel any form of music is beyond me in the sense of that I don't understand it or I don't have some love for some part of it.

I find it to be the ultimate backhanded compliment when you are compared against yourself.

I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

I'm not even sure what I want, but that's not the point - it's that I want it now.

You can be addicted to misery the same way as you can be addicted to drugs.

As I walk through This wicked world Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity, I ask myself Is all hope lost? Is there only pain and hatred, and misery? And each time I feel like this inside, There's one thing I wanna know: What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, & Understanding?

Certain songs have been written years apart, but they have a natural continuity to my mind.

I'm drawing from two generations back how to think about music, how to think about why you travel to make music, what the possible pitfalls of that are for the way your life is structured. The good and bad of all of it get into the mix of what's created, what you're creating.

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.

There's no such thing as an original sin.

Life for me is about movement.

People tend to repeat the same quotes at me that I said when I was 23. And of course, you say things then, and sometimes they're ill-advised.

History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats.

Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.

My dad's father was a White Star Line trumpet player in the '20s. It shaped the way that I think about music. My grandfather was classically trained, military trained. He was an orphan who ended up in the Military School of Music in Kneller Hall.

Oh I used to be disgusted and now I try to be amused. But since their wings have got rusted, you know, the angels wanna wear my red shoes.

I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.

What's so funny about peace, love and understanding.

Nonsense prevails, modesty fails Grace and virtue turn into stupidity While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts They still think they're the gods of antiquity If something you missed didn't even exist It was just an ideal is it such a surprise?

Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.

I wish you luck with a capital F.

I can't say anymore than I love you. Anything else would be a waste of breath.

I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.

You do have to be a bit careful with your voice. It is an instrument.

I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why.

Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things.

There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie.

The theme of exile is attractive to me, because it's sort of like the family business. Not just music, but travel.

Happiness isn't a fortune in a cookie. It's deeper, wider, funnier, and more transporting than that.

Don't start me talking, I could talk all night. My mind goes sleepwalking while I'm putting the world right.

I think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn't have a twist.

The radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools tryin' to anesthetize the way that you feel.

You have to face the fact that I have no reputation as a composer; I have my reputation as a songwriter and a performer-and that opportunity came this summer, when I was invited to perform at the Lincoln Centre festival in New York... three nights.

I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow.

My grandfather and my father disagreed about music, not least of all because my dad wanted to improvise. It wasn't just that he wanted to play different music; it was just that he came off the dots.

Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.

There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip.

[Commercial radio] is owned by one or two corporations now, and they're not in the music business. They're in the advertising business.... So let's not kid ourselves. If you want to hear music, go buy a guitar.

I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.

Songs are more powerful than books.

My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials.

And I'm up while the dawn is breaking, even though my heart is aching. I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians.

People speak with enormous pomposity and arrogance about music.

I really thought twice about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when that came in. I always was of a mind that it's an inherently stupid idea to put something like that in a glass case.

I can write orchestrations, but I can't sight-read music and play at the same time. I don't have enough facility.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.

And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.

It's not crazy to want to have certain songs be developed harmonically and still want to make noise with the guitar. And you can have both.

Well, T Bone's had a remarkable career as a producer since the time that we first worked together. He was dividing his time between recording and producing when we first met, and touring. We toured together and we were great friends.

I don't think I was ever particularly mean. I can certainly think of some idiotic exchanges I've had. I was accused of destroying pop music, like Wagner destroyed opera - a guy in Germany started ranting that at me.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.

And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.

Don't wear your heart on your sleeve when your remarks are off the cuff.

I'm a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale.

It's a petty thing, but I wouldn't join the Scouts when I was a kid, 'cause you had to swear allegiance to the queen. I'm just not a royalist. I think it's idiotic, a hereditary principle.

I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong.

Was it a millionaire who said, "Imagine no possessions"?