298 Quotes by Elvis Costello

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.

There are five things to write songs about: I'm leaving you. You're leaving me. I want you. You don't want me. I believe in something. Five subjects, and 12 notes. For all that, we musicians do pretty well.

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

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

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

I started with rock n' roll and...then you start to take it apart like a child with a toy and you see there's blues and there's country...Then you go back from country into American music...and you end up in Scotland and Ireland eventually.

I find humming is very useful.

I can write orchestrations, but I can't sight-read music and play at the same time. I don't have enough facility.

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