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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

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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
Well
Songs
Writing
Subjects
Something
Pretty
Believe
Five
Things
Song
Musicians
Write
Notes
Music
Leaving
Wells
Musician

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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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Songs are more powerful than books.
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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.
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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.
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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'll never be alone in the bone orchard.
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I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions And I'm giving you a longing look Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book.
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The cost of living in sin would make a poor man out of Paul Getty.
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Life for me is about movement.
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You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it's just going to be an obscurity.
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Serious music usually doesn't pay.
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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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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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Those days she was just a beautiful girl, now she's framed and hung up.
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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.
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She said she was working for the ABC news, it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.
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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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I love you more than anything in this world. I don't expect that will last.
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