Elvis Costello Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song.

  Elvis Costello

  Song, Writing, Titles

• Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.

  Elvis Costello

  Music, Stupid, Writing

• 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.

  Elvis Costello

  Music, Song, Believe

• 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.

  Elvis Costello

  Writing, Opportunity, Years

  Interview with Brian Wise, www.elviscostello.info. April 10, 2004.

• 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

  Song, Writing, Awards

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

  Elvis Costello

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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

  Elvis Costello

  Writing, Sight, Play

  "Elvis Costello: The ESQ&A". Interview with Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. December 17, 2013.

• 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

  Song, Writing, Location

• I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions And I'm giving you a longing look Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book.

  Elvis Costello

  Book, Writing, Men

  Song: Every Day I Write The Book, 1983

• 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.

  Elvis Costello

  Writing, Hands, Personality

• Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing. And you start talking yourself out of the bold melody and start wanting to arrange it in another key or something. Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.

  Elvis Costello

  Writing, Keys, Talking

  Source: tomwaitsfan.com

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

  Elvis Costello

  Song, Jobs, Writing

• I'd be very suspicious of anybody that seems to have to move to the next level of expression. I distrust that: now I'm writing a book, now I'm being an actor. It should be a natural thing. I think it's a natural thing for you to act. But I think that people that feel that, because they've written one maybe quite beautiful love song that equips them to play Romeo, is probably misguided.

  Elvis Costello

  Beautiful, Song, Moving

  "Summit Talk". Option magazine Interview with Tom Waits, tomwaitsfan.com. July 1989.

• Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing.

  Elvis Costello

  Writing, Singing, Sometimes

• 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.

  Elvis Costello

  Song, Writing, Mean

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