Elvis Costello Quotes
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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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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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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.
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There are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder.
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I woke up and one of us was crying.
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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'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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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 swore you wouldn't shout. If it's not your punch, then it's your pout.
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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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In the tiny torn up pieces of his mind he's irresistible too.
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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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I can write orchestrations, but I can't sight-read music and play at the same time. I don't have enough facility.
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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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Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone.
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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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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.
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Though the passion still flutters and flickers, it never got into our knickers.
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The radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools tryin' to anesthetize the way that you feel.
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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.
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You can be addicted to misery the same way as you can be addicted to drugs.
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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.
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Elvis Presley and Puccini shall return.
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Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere.