Elvis Costello

We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

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.

It's the damage that we do and never know. It's the words that we don't say that scare me so.

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.

Happiness isn't a fortune in a cookie. It's deeper, wider, funnier, and more transporting than that.

I've had a lot of different experiences in music over the years.And not everything you do can satisfy everybody's idealised version of you.

I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.

And I'm up while the dawn is breaking, even though my heart is aching. I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians.

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.