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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Then I recalled that Andersen belongs to the world,

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.

There's no such thing as an original sin.

Those days she was just a beautiful girl, now she's framed and hung up.

I woke up and one of us was crying.

Though the passion still flutters and flickers, it never got into our knickers.

It's what's on the record not what labels on it. You know, that's like getting a box of cornflakes and eating the cardboard.

It's the stupid details that my heart is breaking for.

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 wanna bite the hand that feeds me. I wanna bite that hand so badly. I want to make them wish they'd never seen me.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The long arm of the law slides up the outskirts of town.

The cost of living in sin would make a poor man out of Paul Getty.

Don't try to touch my heart, it's darker than you think. And don't try to read my mind, because it's full of disappearing ink.

When they finally put you in the ground, I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.

For all the courage that we never had, I'm just about glad.

The truth can't hurt you, it's just like the dark. It scares you witless, but in time you see things clear and stark.

There are a few things that I regret, but nothing that I need to forget.

I feel like a juggler running out of hands.

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.

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

No use wishing now for any other sin.

You think you're alone until you realize you're in it. Now fear is here to stay, love is here for a visit.

It's a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth; sometimes it delays it.

Even in a perfect world, where everyone was equal I'd still own the film rights and be working on the sequal

Serious music usually doesn't pay.

You'll never be alone in the bone orchard.

I just got into it like a lot of people through the rock 'n' roll bands in the late '60s that turned to country music, like The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, but particularly through The Byrds because of Gram Parsons, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman (with their 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo). They kind of introduced English kids to Merle Haggard and George Jones and the Louvins (brothers Charlie and Ira).

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.

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

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

I find humming is very useful.

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

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.

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

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

Life for me is about movement.

You've got a chemistry class; I want a piece of your mind; You don't know what you started when you mixed it up with mine...

Why'd you have to say that there's always someone who can do it better than I can And don't you think that I know that walkin' on water won't make me a miracle man

There are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder.

Cause somewhere in the Quizling Clinic, there's a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes.

I'm just the mere shadow of my former selfishness. I crave the silhouette of your kiss.

You swore you wouldn't shout. If it's not your punch, then it's your pout.

What do we care, if the world is a joke? We'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke. Death wears a big hat cause he's a big bloke.

In the tiny torn up pieces of his mind he's irresistible too.

Elvis Presley and Puccini shall return.

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

The way you look I understand how you were not impressed, but I heard you let that little friend of mine take off your party dress.

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

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

I'm goin' to take a little trip, down paradise's endless shores. They say that travel broadens the mind, till you can't get your head out of doors.

Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone.

Funny, now I can see, how looks can be deceiving.

There's so many people to see. So many people to check up on and add to your collection.

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

She pulls the eyes out with a face like a magnet.

It's the damage that we do and never know. It's the words that we don't say that scare me so.

You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine.

Patsy Cline belongs shoulder-to-shoulder with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.

Clowntime is over Time to take cover While others just talk and talk Somebody's watching where the others don't walk.