Elvis Costello Quotes

I do a lot of research, I try to think about how it relates to music and I just do a ton of drawing. It's much easier to work your ideas out that way.

I've followed the lives of great musicians and have learned that you don't have to always write in pain. You have all of your past experiences, feelings, and thoughts that you can turn on when you need them and turn off when you don't.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

It's true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is... songs comes through you.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

I don't think of work between albums. Of course, I go through regular life and I live and I experience different things, good and bad, and it does help me, but I don't think about writing or what I'm gonna do with whatever's going on while I'm going through it.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.

For me, drawing generates thinking and vice versa.

I've done a lot of albums and I kinda know when I'm onto something that was inspirational for me to record and create, and this was one of those projects where I really enjoyed making the album.

I think there are times when a song can be a spiritual experience - just making music, in general, is pretty much that.

Experience is definitely the high road once driven. It actually enhances the songwriting and song sourcing process.

I view art as an inspirational tool.

I think it's important for fans to know that but if I'm doing something that inspires me musically then I think it will inspire someone else too.

I try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isn't a song that I need to sing.

When I look at designer books I am sometimes puzzled why they don't share their inspiration, when it's obvious somebody had such great inspiration.

I think it's being innovative and very creative to stay away from flat-out sampling somebody else's record. To me, that doesn't show too much of your creative side unless you take a little piece and add it, almost like spice on a chicken.

While drawing, I discover what I really want to say.

My music is inspired by where I am and what I'm feeling at the time. Traveling and meeting new people is also incredibly inspiring to me.

I feel really relevant and creative, and I don't think I would've made an album if I didn't feel relevant. I wouldn't have said a word.

I think with everything I do, I'm trying to just come up with new ways of creating music and mixing styles together. That's just what's fun for me to do, to try to make myself inspired.

I have to be inspired to write a song.

What's cool about making music is when you create a record, it comes from somewhere.

One of the nice things about songwriting is you can be inspired by absolutely anything.

I write songs every day, 14 times a day.