Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I find it to be the ultimate backhanded compliment when you are compared against yourself. "

Related Quotes:

" You do have to be a bit careful with your voice. It is an instrument. "

" Life for me is about movement. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip. "

" I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why. "

" 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. "

" These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas. "

" I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time. "

" Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert. "

" Songs are more powerful than books. "

" I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music. "

" People become so deeply attached to the sound of one period that they blow a fuse when you move on. I've heard people complain bitterly about recordings they haven't even heard. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused. "

" You have to face the fact that I have no reputation as a composer; I have my reputation as a songwriter and a performer-and that opportunity came this summer, when I was invited to perform at the Lincoln Centre festival in New York... three nights. "

" You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it's just going to be an obscurity. "

" Well, 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. "

" The Internet is overrated. It's much smaller an innovation than people think it is. I don't think it's changed the way anybody makes music. "

" My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant. "

" My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials. "

" I find humming is very useful. "

" I've worked hard, every single day since I left school. I think I have a Protestant work ethic. "

" I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong. "

" There's no such thing as an original sin. "

" 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. "

" People tend to repeat the same quotes at me that I said when I was 23. And of course, you say things then, and sometimes they're ill-advised. "

" 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. "