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 CostelloRead
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.
Interpretation
Human creativity stems from our primal instincts.
In this quote, Elvis Costello suggests that at our core, humans are driven by basic animal instincts, and everything we create—like music, poetry, and literature—serves to articulate and justify these inherent urges. This perspective invites us to reconsider the depth of human expression as a reflection of our biological nature rather than an elevated or purely intellectual endeavor.
In practice
In a discussion about the roots of music and art, you might use this quote to highlight the primal influences behind creativity.
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.
Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.
I had given up practising my Jewish religion when I was a 14-year-old girl and did not begin to feel Jewish again until I had returned to God.
The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
True masters are those who've chosen to make a life rather than a living.
I see thee better in the dark I do not need a light.
Backward we traveled to reclaim the day Before we fell, like Icarus, undone; All we find are altars in decay And profane words scrawled black across the sun.
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