Elvis Costello quotes:

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

I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.

I don't think I was ever particularly mean. I can certainly think of some idiotic exchanges I've had. I was accused of destroying pop music, like Wagner destroyed opera - a guy in Germany started ranting that at me.

Well, T Bone's had a remarkable career as a producer since the time that we first worked together. He was dividing his time between recording and producing when we first met, and touring. We toured together and we were great friends.

There was not a lot of rock n roll in the house. Our parents didnt think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasnt very hip.

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.

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 think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn't have a twist.

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

I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.

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

Theres so many fish in the sea That only rise up in the sweat and smoke like mercury

Happiness isn't a fortune in a cookie. It's deeper, wider, funnier, and more transporting than that.

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

I know that when I make a record like The Delivery Man as a contrast to even Il Sogno, this is going to reach a wider audience, because it communicates in that very direct way.

But there are things in Il Sogno that the methods of The Delivery Man could never achieve.

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.

Well, I've had a lot of different experiences in music over the years. And not everything you do can satisfy everybody's idealised version of you.

I really thought twice about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when that came in. I always was of a mind that it's an inherently stupid idea to put something like that in a glass case.

People become so deeply attached to the sound of one period that they blow a fuse when you move on. I've heard people complain bitterly about recordings they haven't even heard.

I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.

We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

There's no such thing as an original sin.

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

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?

Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things.

Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.

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's filing her nails while they are dragging the lake.

I find humming is very useful.

Somebody should clip Sting around the head and tell him to stop using that ridiculous Jamaican accent.

I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

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.

[Commercial] radio is absolutely the enemy of music. They are my sworn and mortal enemy, and I will have nothing to do with them.

I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why.

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

What's so funny about peace, love and understanding

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.

People speak with enormous pomposity and arrogance about music.

History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats.

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.

The radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools tryin' to anesthetize the way that you feel.

It's a breath you took too late.It's a death that's worse than fate.

I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong.

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

The battle with the bottle is nothing so novel.

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

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

Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song.

You must hold on to the sort of finger-painting aspect of music. That's something I learned, particularly from listening to Neil Young. Tom Waits is another one, because Tom's music is incredibly sophisticated and beautifully arranged, but he's using a toolbox that's unlike anybody else's.

Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone.

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.

They say you better listen to the voice of reason But they don't give you any choice 'cause they think that it's treason. So you had better do as you are told. You better listen to the radio.

There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip.

'Content' is a word that has never sat well with me. Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling.

My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials.

Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert.

Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.

It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.

You have to face the fact that I have no reputation as a composer; I have my reputation as a songwriter and a performer-and that opportunity came this summer, when I was invited to perform at the Lincoln Centre festival in New York... three nights.

There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie.

Content' is a word that has never sat well with me. Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling.

I've had an unusual life. A life far removed from most people's experience.

I started with rock n' roll and...then you start to take it apart like a child with a toy and you see there's blues and there's country...Then you go back from country into American music...and you end up in Scotland and Ireland eventually.

And I don't feel any form of music is beyond me in the sense of that I don't understand it or I don't have some love for some part of it.

You can be addicted to misery the same way as you can be addicted to drugs.

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

There are five things to write songs about: I'm leaving you. You're leaving me. I want you. You don't want me. I believe in something. Five subjects, and 12 notes. For all that, we musicians do pretty well.

As I walk through This wicked world Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity, I ask myself Is all hope lost? Is there only pain and hatred, and misery? And each time I feel like this inside, There's one thing I wanna know: What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, & Understanding?

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.

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

Patsy Cline belongs shoulder-to-shoulder with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I can write orchestrations, but I can't sight-read music and play at the same time. I don't have enough facility.

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.

The theme of exile is attractive to me, because it's sort of like the family business. Not just music, but travel.

The people with the most resources are the federal government. If you can invade a country halfway across the world in a matter of days, you can surely come to the aid of your own citizens in a shorter order of time.

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.

[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'm goin' to take a little trip, down paradise's endless shores. They say that travel broadens the mind, till you can't get your head out of doors.

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.

Funny, now I can see, how looks can be deceiving.

The way you look I understand how you were not impressed, but I heard you let that little friend of mine take off your party dress.

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.

Though the passion still flutters and flickers, it never got into our knickers.

I woke up and one of us was crying.

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.

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.

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

There are a few things that I regret, but nothing that I need to forget.

I've never had any real concern about posterity. I hope some people will be sorry when I'm not here, but I'm not playing for that.

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

When they finally put you in the ground, I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.

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.

Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock'n'roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I've done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back.

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

When in doubt, play track 4 - it is usually the one you want.

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.

No use wishing now for any other sin.

I'm not even sure what I want, but that's not the point - it's that I want it now.

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 the damage that we do and never know. It's the words that we don't say that scare me so.

Good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere.

Songs are more powerful than books.

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.

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

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.

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...

There are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder.

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

It's a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth; sometimes it delays it.

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.

There's no money back guarantee on future happiness.

Imagination is a powerful deceiver.

Certain songs have been written years apart, but they have a natural continuity to my mind.