Elvis Costello Quotes
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Though the passion still flutters and flickers, it never got into our knickers.
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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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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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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.
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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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Patsy Cline belongs shoulder-to-shoulder with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.
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Elvis Presley and Puccini shall return.
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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.
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People speak with enormous pomposity and arrogance about music.
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I could promise that I'll always be true to you, but we may not live to be so old.
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Nonsense prevails, modesty fails Grace and virtue turn into stupidity While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts They still think they're the gods of antiquity If something you missed didn't even exist It was just an ideal is it such a surprise?
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The battle with the bottle is nothing so novel.
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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.
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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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Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone.
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You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine.
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When they finally put you in the ground, I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.
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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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History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats.
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My grandfather and my father disagreed about music, not least of all because my dad wanted to improvise. It wasn't just that he wanted to play different music; it was just that he came off the dots.
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My dad had a steady job with a really major dance band from '54 till '68, and then quit because he wanted to play different music. He wanted to sing about peace. He believed in these things.
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My dad's father was a White Star Line trumpet player in the '20s. It shaped the way that I think about music. My grandfather was classically trained, military trained. He was an orphan who ended up in the Military School of Music in Kneller Hall.
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The cost of living in sin would make a poor man out of Paul Getty.
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Now I just don't know who to tell to go to hell Who put the old devil in the distorted angel?