Elvis Costello Quotations

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

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.

'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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.

Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

When the media attention switches away from this story onto the next thing that happens in the world, the circumstances will still be there.

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.

I didn't want it to sound like a pastiche of Andersen,

We were really looking for a fresh sound, and I think you can hear that with the use of electronics on the record, ... It makes it fun to play loud music without it being a retro thing at all.

The songs will tell a story that I have imagined existing between the lines of Andersen's biography and some of his most famous tales, ... They speak of a misfit's love for an unattainable woman and a struggle between a huckster and someone who composes music in secret.

The words that are being spoken are serious, whether you take them at face value or listen to them at all, ... I'm not a preacher, I'm a singer. I can sing about serious things, but I don't think I have to put on a pious face to do it.

It would be a surprise if people thought I would be playing a lot of rock 'n' roll.

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.

Seems to me, that the worlds are moving closer together rather than one invading the other. I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.

I've always thought of myself as a ballad singer who could sing rock 'n' roll, not the other way around,

I've been asked to sing and that's what I do. People come (to this event) for all the right reasons.

They say 'will you stop listing all the song that he's written'. No, I've got a few more I've not told you about yet.

This record may explain what I've been doing during the last 12 years when I haven't had an electric guitar in my hands.

I followed The Byrds a lot, and then when they did a country styled record it made me curious to know who these people were that they liked.

I just hope we keep in our minds that an effort like this can never be too expensive.

Then I recalled that Andersen belongs to the world,

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When you work with new people, I think that it throws all of the matters into relief, because you have to explain yourself every time. It's like crossing a new border. They want to see your documents.

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

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.

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

The battle with the bottle is nothing so novel.

[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.

People speak with enormous pomposity and arrogance about music.

If I am frightened then I can hide it If I am crying, I'll call it laughter If I am haunted, I'll call it my imaginary friend If I am bleeding I'll call it wine But if you leave me then I am broken And if I'm broken then only death remains

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

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.

Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere.

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.

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

My dad had a steady job with a really major dance band from '54 till '68, and then quit because he wanted to play different music. He wanted to sing about peace. He believed in these things.

Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.

Songs are more powerful than books.

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.

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.

There is something wrong with you if you don't get angry about something.

She's filing her nails while they are dragging the lake.

Days of Dutch courage, just three French letters, and a German sense of humour.

Sleeping with forgiveness in your heart for me.

The wages of sin are an expensive infection.

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

There's no money back guarantee on future happiness.

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.

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 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.

You can't live in the past, and I don't. I'm not nostalgic about my own work at all.

I knew I was in trouble, but I thought I was in hell.

I'd be very suspicious of anybody that seems to have to move to the next level of expression. I distrust that: now I'm writing a book, now I'm being an actor. It should be a natural thing. I think it's a natural thing for you to act. But I think that people that feel that, because they've written one maybe quite beautiful love song that equips them to play Romeo, is probably misguided.

I wish you luck with a capital F.

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

Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being.

When you're working with the same band you kind of know their style inside out, and even when you've been working for seven years with the same people, suddenly they'll do something you didn't even think they were capable of.

Imagination is a powerful deceiver.

She said she was working for the ABC news, it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.

I could promise that I'll always be true to you, but we may not live to be so old.

I mistrust these people in music industry who can be everybody. This is where technology dictates to them. I mistrust that, that in somehow the chips capture the soul of a player, that's patent nonsense.

If it wasn't for some acci-accidents, then some would never learn.

People think it is all about country music, and I know a lot of country music has come out of there, but like Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dillon was recorded there. A lot of great records; R&B records, jazz records. It's a lot of great players and great studios.

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant, someone who disrupts the daily drag of life just enough to leave the victim thinking there's maybe more to it all than the mere hum-drum quality of existence.

Anything that has to travel all the way down from your cerebellum to your fingertips, there's a lot of things that can happen on the journey. Sometimes I'll listen to records, my own stuff, and I think god, the original idea for this was so much better than the mutation that we arrived at.

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

I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions And I'm giving you a longing look Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book.

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?