Elvis Costello Quotes

Some people love some music, and they hear it a year later and they think, 'What was I thinking?'

There aren't reasons why you like this song or this piece of music, or don't like it. It's just, it's either right or wrong, you know?

Great music is in the ear of the beholder.

People say I seem very negative about new music - well, if somebody asks me what I think of Keane, I'll tell 'em. I don't like 'em. I'll obviously take it a step too far and grossly insult the keyboard player's mam or summat, but I'm afraid that's just me.

I should in fairness add that my taste in music is reputedly deplorable.

The thing is, I make music I like. So it's just weird if someone says they don't like it.

The music speaks for itself. You either like it or you don't, or you're somewhere in between. That doesn't change whether I'm in the band or not.

Change is strong, but habit is strong too; and you cannot change the old for new, like a garment.

I realize that we've come to a different way of showing movies. But I'm still with the old ways, and I can't change.

The familiar changes as we cling to it.

The fact that I made a special movie with an old-fashioned style - even if it's a mix between with modern and old-fashioned things - must mean I feel both ways about change. In a way I'm resisting, but in a way adapting myself to the times.

I like all music. The only music I don't like is bad music.

I've learned that for many people, change is uncomfortable. Maybe they want to go through it, and they can see the benefit of it, but at a gut level, change is uncomfortable.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

Change occurs in direct proportion to dissatisfaction, but dissatisfaction never changes.

We're also passionate about music and very critical about the music that we listen to.

When you're a little kid, you just like music that makes you happy and is fun. As you get older, you reach college or your 20s and you decide that music should be challenging and all art should be smart. So you start to think it makes you like high art more to put down things you consider low art. I don't even think things are low art.

Songs go through cycles for me. And sometimes I lose my passion for some of them.

As long as change is inevitable, then fundamentalism is inevitable.

Those who cling to the past won't give up without a fight.

Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in. I suppose we all realize the degree to which fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood.

Custom is petrification; nothing but dynamite can dislodge it for a century.

What was good enough for my father is good enough for me" is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.

Most want progress but hardly anybody wants change. Change is almost always a little traumatic.

Many people are so afraid of change.