Quote

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

Elvis Costello

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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
Stupid
Music
Writing
Thing
Really
Like
Architecture
Dancing

More quotes by Elvis Costello

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Music is more like water than a rhinoceros. It doesn't charge madly down one path. It runs away in every direction.
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You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine.
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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.
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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.
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Clowntime is over Time to take cover While others just talk and talk Somebody's watching where the others don't walk.
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I feel like a juggler running out of hands.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Women hear rhythm differently than men.
Elvis Costello
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I wanna bite the hand that feeds me. I wanna bite that hand so badly. I want to make them wish they'd never seen me.
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Even in a perfect world where everyone was equal. I'd still own the film rights and be working on the sequel.
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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.
Elvis Costello
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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.
Elvis Costello
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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.
Elvis Costello
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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.
Elvis Costello
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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.
Elvis Costello
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Days of Dutch courage, just three French letters, and a German sense of humour.
Elvis Costello
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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?
Elvis Costello
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Don't tell me you don't know what love is When you're old enough to know better.
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