Quotes from Elvis Costello

I find it to be the ultimate backhanded compliment when you are compared against yourself.

I can't say anymore than I love you. Anything else would be a waste of breath.

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

Why can't a man stand alone? Must he be burdened by all that he's taught to consider his own? His skin and his station, his kin and his crown, his flag and his nation They just weigh him down

She's no angel.He's no saint.

I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why.

Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.

There's a girl in this dress, there's always a girl in distress.

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 find humming is very useful.

You can't live in the past, and I don't. I'm not nostalgic about my own work, at all.

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

And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.

She said she was working for the ABC news, it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.

Imagination is a powerful deceiver.

Those days she was just a beautiful girl, now she's framed and hung up.

There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie.

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.

There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip.

Days of Dutch courage, just three French letters, and a German sense of humour.

What do we care, if the world is a joke? We'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke. Death wears a big hat cause he's a big bloke.

It's a breath you took too late.It's a death that's worse than fate.

My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials.