Elvis Costello Quotes
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In the tiny torn up pieces of his mind he's irresistible too.
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Don't wear your heart on your sleeve when your remarks are off the cuff.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder.
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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.
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You think you're alone until you realize you're in it. Now fear is here to stay, love is here for a visit.
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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.
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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.
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You can be addicted to misery the same way as you can be addicted to drugs.
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You'll never be alone in the bone orchard.
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Commercial radio is absolutely the enemy of music. They are my sworn and mortal enemy, and I will have nothing to do with them.
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It's not crazy to want to have certain songs be developed harmonically and still want to make noise with the guitar. And you can have both.
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I'm drawing from two generations back how to think about music, how to think about why you travel to make music, what the possible pitfalls of that are for the way your life is structured. The good and bad of all of it get into the mix of what's created, what you're creating.
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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.
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You swore you wouldn't shout. If it's not your punch, then it's your pout.
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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.
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What 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.
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There are a lot of things that you can like at a distance without spending a huge amount of time pondering. It's not so complicated.
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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).
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Elvis Presley and Puccini shall return.
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Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing. And you start talking yourself out of the bold melody and start wanting to arrange it in another key or something. Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.
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I could promise that I'll always be true to you, but we may not live to be so old.