Quote

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant, someone who disrupts the daily drag of life just enough to leave the victim thinking there's maybe more to it all than the mere hum-drum quality of existence.

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
Thinking
Mere
Irritant
Life
Ultimate
Disrupts
Leave
Irritants
Existence
Drum
Maybe
Vocation
Quality
Drag
Someone
Victim
Enough
Daily

More quotes by Elvis Costello

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It's the stupid details that my heart is breaking for.
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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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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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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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Those days she was just a beautiful girl, now she's framed and hung up.
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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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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.
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I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.
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Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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I wish you luck with a capital F.
Elvis Costello
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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
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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 find it to be the ultimate backhanded compliment when you are compared against yourself.
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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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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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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.
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