Top 150 Elvis Costello Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “There are a few things that I regret, but nothing that I need to forget.”

— Elvis Costello

52. “The long arm of the law slides up the outskirts of town.”

— Elvis Costello

53. “You swore you wouldn’t shout. If it’s not your punch, then it’s your pout.”

— Elvis Costello

54. “There are some things you can’t cover up with lipstick and powder.”

— Elvis Costello

55. “Funny, now I can see, how looks can be deceiving.”

— Elvis Costello

56. “Music is more like water than a rhinoceros. It doesn’t charge madly down one path. It runs away in every direction.”

— Elvis Costello

57. “When they finally put you in the ground, I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.”

— Elvis Costello

58. “The battle with the bottle is nothing so novel.”

— Elvis Costello

59. “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.”

— Elvis Costello

60. “When you’re working with the same band you kind of know their style inside out, and even when you’ve been working for seven years with the same people, suddenly they’ll do something you didn’t even think they were capable of.”

— Elvis Costello

61. “The wages of sin are an expensive infection.”

— Elvis Costello

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

— Elvis Costello

63. “Cause somewhere in the Quizling Clinic, there’s a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes.”

— Elvis Costello

64. “Those days she was just a beautiful girl, now she’s framed and hung up.”

— Elvis Costello

65. “If I am frightened then I can hide it If I am crying, I’ll call it laughter If I am haunted, I’ll call it my imaginary friend If I am bleeding I’ll call it wine But if you leave me then I am broken And if I’m broken then only death remains.”

— Elvis Costello

66. “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s really a stupid thing to want to do.”

— Elvis Costello

67. “I’ve never felt British. I’m just not interested in national identity. I don’t know why.”

— Elvis Costello

68. “Clowntime is over Time to take cover While others just talk and talk Somebody’s watching where the others don’t walk.”

— Elvis Costello

69. “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.”

— Elvis Costello

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

— Elvis Costello

71. “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.”

— Elvis Costello

72. “The way you look I understand how you were not impressed, but I heard you let that little friend of mine take off your party dress.”

— Elvis Costello

73. “My dad’s father was a White Star Line trumpet player in the ’20s. It shaped the way that I think about music. My grandfather was classically trained, military trained. He was an orphan who ended up in the Military School of Music in Kneller Hall.”

— Elvis Costello

74. “There’s a girl here and She’s almost you...”

— Elvis Costello

75. “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.”

— Elvis Costello

76. “They say you better listen to the voice of reason But they don’t give you any choice ’cause they think that it’s treason. So you had better do as you are told. You better listen to the radio.”

— Elvis Costello

77. “Patsy Cline belongs shoulder-to-shoulder with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.”

— Elvis Costello

78. “Though the passion still flutters and flickers, it never got into our knickers.”

— Elvis Costello

79. “I could promise that I’ll always be true to you, but we may not live to be so old.”

— Elvis Costello

80. “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.”

— Elvis Costello

81. “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.”

— Elvis Costello

82. “Sleeping with forgiveness in your heart for me.”

— Elvis Costello

83. “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

84. “If it wasn’t for some acci-accidents, then some would never learn.”

— Elvis Costello

85. “Imagination is a powerful deceiver.”

— Elvis Costello

86. “It’s the damage that we do and never know. It’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so.”

— Elvis Costello

87. “My grandfather and my father disagreed about music, not least of all because my dad wanted to improvise. It wasn’t just that he wanted to play different music; it was just that he came off the dots.”

— Elvis Costello

88. “Songs are more powerful than books.”

— Elvis Costello

89. “Turn up the TV. No one listening will suspect, even your mother won’t detect it, no your father won’t know. they think that I’ve got no respect but everything means less than zero.”

— Elvis Costello

90. “The cost of living in sin would make a poor man out of Paul Getty.”

— Elvis Costello

91. “The people with the most resources are the federal government. If you can invade a country halfway across the world in a matter of days, you can surely come to the aid of your own citizens in a shorter order of time.”

— Elvis Costello

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

— Elvis Costello

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

— Elvis Costello

94. “Women hear rhythm differently than men.”

— Elvis Costello

95. “Don’t try to touch my heart, it’s darker than you think. And don’t try to read my mind, because it’s full of disappearing ink.”

— Elvis Costello

96. “Life for me is about movement.”

— Elvis Costello

97. “There is something wrong with you if you don’t get angry about something.”

— Elvis Costello

98. “Certain songs have been written years apart, but they have a natural continuity to my mind.”

— Elvis Costello

99. “There was a Fender Palomino acoustic lying in the corner in an open case, which, as you know, often symbolizes low morals or easy virtue in paintings of antiquity.”

— Elvis Costello

100. “And I don’t feel any form of music is beyond me in the sense of that I don’t understand it or I don’t have some love for some part of it.”

— Elvis Costello