Quotes from Elvis Costello

There was that reference to Allan Sherman's trip to a summer camp, in "Goon Squad." Mother, Father, I'm here in the zoo I can't come home 'cause I've grown up too soon

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.

Once I had recognized that it was not my vocation to write a happy ending, I did my damnedest to avoid one entirely. I once referred to this process as "Messing up my life, so I could write stupid little songs about it," and I can't improve on that description here, but then songs are never exactly taken from life.

And I'm up while the dawn is breaking, even though my heart is aching. I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians.

My first lyric departed directly from Mingus's title "This Subdues My Passion." If you didn't think the song was already half written after that title, then you had no business dallying with the tune in the first place. I wrote about the way that music tempers the violence within a man. This subdues my passion And it may control my rage It may stem the poison that spills out onto the page

It was a real party of swells.

Don't put your heart out on your sleeve, When your remarks are off the cuff - Riot Act from Get Happy

We'd booked twelve weeks of studio time, a fantastic amount of leeway, given that my first record was cut in a total of twenty-four hours and This Year's Model in a mere eleven days. We

A senior BBC music programmer smarmed up to me and took this opportunity to remind me of my diminished status in his petty universe, "Of course, you'd have had a lot more hits if you'd just taken out all the sevenths and minor chords." I suppose I would have had even more, if I'd only taken out all of the music entirely and most of the words, too.

When The Attractions and I first played the Palais in January 1979, one reviewer unfavorably compared us to Freddie and the Dreamers.

I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused...

Well, T Bone's had a remarkable career as a producer since the time that we first worked together. He was dividing his time between recording and producing when we first met, and touring. We toured together and we were great friends.

I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong.

You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it's just going to be an obscurity.

There are a lot of things that you can like at a distance without spending a huge amount of time pondering. It's not so complicated.

Living a very long time would be a very scary thing.

Well there's a line that you must toe and it'll soon be time to go but it's darker than you know in those Complicated Shadows

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.

'Content' is a word that has never sat well with me. Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling.

It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.

The theme of exile is attractive to me, because it's sort of like the family business. Not just music, but travel.

I'm goin' to take a little trip, down paradise's endless shores. They say that travel broadens the mind, till you can't get your head out of doors.

It's the stupid details that my heart is breaking for.

Very similar experience happened last year when we released this album, North. It was on Deutsche Grammophon, it was very, very honest. It was the most honest record I've ever written.