Elvis Costello Quotes

Grid View List View
Quote of the Day Picture Quotes Top 100 Inspirational Quotes Top 100 Love Quotes Top 100 Happiness Quotes
Socrates Leonardo Da Vinci Groucho Marx Mahatma Gandhi Dr. Seuss Charles Spurgeon Carl Jung Barack Obama Lucy Larcom Pope John Paul Ii
Dad Anchorman Quirky Money Zoos Women Hilarious Government Smile Inspirational
  • Singer-Songwriter
  • born 1954
  • 54 quotes

Elvis Costello, Singer-Songwriter (born 1954), is quoted 54 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Music, Original, Ultimate and Lots.

Quotes with a ready-made image come first, then the rest in order of how often they are read and shared. Open any quote to copy it, share it, or turn it into a picture quote.

I find humming is very useful.

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

There's no such thing as an original sin.

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

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.

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

Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

'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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Turn up the TV. No one listening will suspect, even your mother won't detect it, no your father won't know. they think that I've got no respect but everything means less than zero.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Elvis Costello is quoted on

Share This Page