Elvis Costello Quotes

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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

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 ... ~ Elvis Costello

Living a very long time would be a very scary thing. ~ Elvis Costello

As for music, my tastes are eclectic. Elvis Costello is my all-time favorite. I listen to a lot of jazz, primarily the great female vocalists, and I am very fond of the late cabaret singer Nancy Lamott. ~ Laura Lippman

During the Cold War of the 1950s, American spies were issued eyeglasses with thick, clunky frames. If captured, they were trained to casually chew the curved earpieces, where fatal doses of cyanide were cast inside the plastic. It's these same horn-rimmed suicide glasses, the wrangler says, that inspired the look of Buddy Holly and Elvis Costello. All those young hipsters wearing death on their nose. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

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. ~ Elvis Costello

Well there's a line that you must toe and it'll soon be time to go but it's darker than you know in those Complicated Shadows ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

Oh, I know that she's disgusted,
cause she's feeling so abused.
She gets tired of the lust,
but it's so hard to refuse. ~ Elvis Costello

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

The stuff I write I'm very proud of, but I'm smart enough to know I'll never get on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' next to Elvis Costello. ~ Dan Hill

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). ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

'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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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

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

My mum was a big fan of E.L.O. and Elvis Costello. She used to play that, consistently, all the time when we were kids. And my dad, he would claim to be a singer ... You know, he loves singing, and he used to sing a lot when he was a kid and at parties and stuff like that. So I come from a very party-musical family. ~ James Vincent McMorrow

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

[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. ~ Elvis Costello

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

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

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

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. ~ Elvis Costello

Serious music usually doesn't pay. ~ Elvis Costello

Don't get smart or sarcastic
He snaps back just like elastic
Spare us the theatrics and the verbal gymnastics
We break wise guys just like matchsticks ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

It was a real party of swells. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

You'll never be alone in the bone orchard. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

Well, I used to be disgusted.
Now I try to be amused. ~ Elvis Costello

I would love to hang out with Elvis Costello, to see what he's up to because he seems so fascinating to me. ~ Patrick Stump

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

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? ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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

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. ~ Elvis Costello

Songs are more powerful than books. ~ Elvis Costello

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

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

I knew I was in trouble, but I thought I was in hell. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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

Funny, now I can see, how looks can be deceiving. ~ Elvis Costello

Life for me is about movement. ~ Elvis Costello

Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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

The only two things that motivate me and that matter to me are revenge
and guilt. ~ Elvis Costello

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

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

The wages of sin are an expensive infection. ~ Elvis Costello

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

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

When somebody like Elvis Costello comes along, anybody can make a good record with him. ~ Nick Lowe

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

Women hear rhythm differently than men. ~ Elvis Costello

What happens with 'Mad Men,' it's like an Elvis Costello album; I'll watch it, and then I immediately have to watch it again. AMC will play it back-to-back. I have a tendency to yell at it when my wife's not around because if she catches me yelling at 'Mad Men,' then it gets weird. ~ Michael Weatherly

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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 ~ Elvis Costello

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

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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

I find humming is very useful. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

Music journalists love Elvis Costello and hate me because they look like Elvis Costello ~ David Lee Roth

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. ~ Elvis Costello

You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine. ~ Elvis Costello

Theres a bunch of Elvis Costello records that made all the difference between feeling like a total freak and feeling like ... only a freak. A freak among other freaks ~ Elliott Smith

Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere. ~ Elvis Costello

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

I wish you luck with a capital "F". ~ Elvis Costello

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

I never look for music by genre. I look for an artist who puts a dependable trademark on things. Like Elvis Costello - he's a great songwriter who presents his songs in a number of contexts. I feel the same about my own music. ~ Todd Rundgren

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

Why can't a man stand alone? Must he be burdened by all that he's taught to consider his own? His skin and his station, his kin and his crown, his flag and his nation They just weigh him down ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

History repeats the old conceits ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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. ~ Elvis Costello

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

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

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. ~ Elvis Costello

People speak with enormous pomposity and arrogance about music. ~ Elvis Costello