Elvis Costello Quotes

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

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.

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

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

But if I've done something wrong there's no "ifs" and "buts"
Cause I love you just as much as I hate your guts

Life for me is about movement.

I could say it was the nights when I was lonely
and you were the only one who'd talk.
I could tell you that I like your sensitivity,
when you know it's the way that you walk.

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.

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

Well, I used to be disgusted.
Now I try to be amused.

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

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

Don't tell me you don't know what love is When you're old enough to know better.

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?

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

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

They say you better listen to the voice of reason But they don't give you any choice 'cause they think that it's treason. So you had better do as you are told. You better listen to the radio.

Serious music usually doesn't pay.

History repeats the old conceits

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.

'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.

Then I became an altar boy because of the solemn face, but I got thrown out at fourteen for laughing, because the priest used to mumble everything except the church plate takings.

I'm not going to get too sentimental, like those other sticker valentines, 'cause I don't know if you are loving some body. I only know it isn't mine.

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

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

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

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

I was watching while you're dancing away,
our love got fractured in the echo and sway.
How come everybody wants to be your friend?
You know that it still hurts me just to say it.

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

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.

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

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

People speak with enormous pomposity and arrogance about music.

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

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

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?

No use wishing now for any other sin.

I wish you luck with a capital "F".

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'll never be alone in the bone orchard.

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

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

Songs are more powerful than books.

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 ...

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

I find humming is very useful.

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.

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

S you check your effects, check your reflection,
I'm so affected in the face of your affection

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).

The wages of sin are an expensive infection.

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.

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

I took my better nature out, drowned it in a babbling stream/took the blossom of my youth and blew it all to smithereens.

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

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.

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.

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

You start out imitating your heroes, and the way you fuck up becomes your style.

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

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

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

Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone.

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.

He's got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a fridge.

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.

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.

[Commercial] radio is absolutely the enemy of music. They are my sworn and mortal enemy, and I will have nothing to do with them.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

It was a real party of swells.

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

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.

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.

Oh, I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused.

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

Some people can't physically hear things. A kid that listens to Metallica or something can't hear that, because he's filled himself up with this stuff, he physically can't hear a banjo or a harp or something.

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.

Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being.

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?

You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine.

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.