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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.
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
Work
Throws
Every
Border
Time
Documents
Think
Borders
Thinking
Relief
Like
Explain
People
Matters
Crossing
Matter
Crossings
More quotes by Elvis Costello
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.
Elvis Costello
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.
Elvis Costello
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
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.
Elvis Costello
Clowntime is over Time to take cover While others just talk and talk Somebody's watching where the others don't walk.
Elvis Costello
But there are things in Il Sogno that the methods of The Delivery Man could never achieve.
Elvis Costello
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.
Elvis Costello
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.
Elvis Costello
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
No use wishing now for any other sin.
Elvis Costello
When in doubt, play track 4 - it is usually the one you want.
Elvis Costello
Days of Dutch courage, just three French letters, and a German sense of humour.
Elvis Costello
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.
Elvis Costello
I can't say anymore than I love you. Anything else would be a waste of breath.
Elvis Costello
Happiness isn't a fortune in a cookie. It's deeper, wider, funnier, and more transporting than that.
Elvis Costello
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
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.
Elvis Costello
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.
Elvis Costello
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
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.
Elvis Costello