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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Elvis Costello

Romantic

Music

Bad

" Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love. "

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

" But there are things in Il Sogno that the methods of The Delivery Man could never achieve. "

" I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music. "

" 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 believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises. "

" 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. "

" Happiness isn't a fortune in a cookie. It's deeper, wider, funnier, and more transporting than that. "

Elvis Costello

Happiness

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

" Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me. "

Elvis Costello

Harmony

Because

" My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant. "

" Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things. "

" People become so deeply attached to the sound of one period that they blow a fuse when you move on. I've heard people complain bitterly about recordings they haven't even heard. "

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

" 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

True

Writing

" 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. "

" Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert. "

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

" There's no such thing as an original sin. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Songs are more powerful than books. "

Elvis Costello

Books

Than

" 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. "

Elvis Costello

Rock

Think

" I think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn't have a twist. "

" 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. "

" I'm a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale. "