Quote

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

Elvis Costello

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Elvis Costello
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: August 25
Composer
Guitarist
Record Producer
Singer-Songwriter
London
England
Declan Patrick MacManus
Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus
Declan MacManus
Backhanded
Compliment
Compared
Ultimate
Find

More quotes by Elvis Costello

Image
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.
Elvis Costello
Image
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.
Elvis Costello
Image
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.
Elvis Costello
Image
I woke up and one of us was crying.
Elvis Costello
Image
The Internet is overrated. It's much smaller an innovation than people think it is. I don't think it's changed the way anybody makes music.
Elvis Costello
Image
Now I just don't know who to tell to go to hell Who put the old devil in the distorted angel?
Elvis Costello
Image
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.
Elvis Costello
Image
I'm just the mere shadow of my former selfishness. I crave the silhouette of your kiss.
Elvis Costello
Image
It's a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth sometimes it delays it.
Elvis Costello
Image
Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.
Elvis Costello
Image
It's the damage that we do and never know. It's the words that we don't say that scare me so.
Elvis Costello
Image
She said she was working for the ABC news, it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.
Elvis Costello
Image
You think you're alone until you realize you're in it. Now fear is here to stay, love is here for a visit.
Elvis Costello
Image
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.
Elvis Costello
Image
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.
Elvis Costello
Image
I think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn't have a twist.
Elvis Costello
Image
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.
Elvis Costello
Image
I find humming is very useful.
Elvis Costello
Image
I feel like a juggler running out of hands.
Elvis Costello
Image
Music is more like water than a rhinoceros. It doesn't charge madly down one path. It runs away in every direction.
Elvis Costello