Elvis Costello Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“I've worked hard, every single day since I left school. I think I have a Protestant work ethic.”

“Life for me is about movement.”

“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.”

“Well, 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.”

“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.”

“I don't think I was ever particularly mean. I can certainly think of some idiotic exchanges I've had. I was accused of destroying pop music, like Wagner destroyed opera - a guy in Germany started ranting that at me.”

“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.”

“We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.”

“You have to face the fact that I have no reputation as a composer; I have my reputation as a songwriter and a performer-and that opportunity came this summer, when I was invited to perform at the Lincoln Centre festival in New York... three nights.”

“I find humming is very useful.”