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.
Elvis CostelloI'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 CostelloMaybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.
Elvis CostelloWhat 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.
Elvis CostelloI 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