Elvis Costello Quotes

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

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

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

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're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine.

I feel like a juggler running out of hands.

[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.

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

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

She said she was working for the ABC news, it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.

I woke up and one of us was crying.

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

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.

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

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

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

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'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.

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

When you're working with the same band you kind of know their style inside out, and even when you've been working for seven years with the same people, suddenly they'll do something you didn't even think they were capable of.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Life for me is about movement.

Elvis Presley and Puccini shall return.

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

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.

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

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.

Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere.

Songs are more powerful than books.

If it wasn't for some acci-accidents, then some would never learn.

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.

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

The battle with the bottle is nothing so novel.

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

I can't say anymore than I love you. Anything else would be a waste of breath.

Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.

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.

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

Serious music usually doesn't pay.

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

There's no such thing as an original sin.