Creativity Quote by Elvis Costello

A pivot from bile to bemusement, Elvis Costello’s line reads like a survival tactic smuggled into a punchline. “Disgusted” is the posture of someone still granting the world moral authority: you recoil because you expected better. “Now I try to be amused” suggests he’s stopped bargaining with reality. Not because he’s surrendered, but because he’s learned disgust is a dead-end emotion - pure heat, no light, exhausting to sustain. Amusement, by contrast, is distance with a pulse. It keeps you sharp without letting the mess own your nervous system.

Costello’s whole persona has long traded in that weaponized intelligence: songs that sound like pop but cut like editorials, romance that curdles into indictment, charm that arrives carrying a grudge. So the line isn’t a Hallmark upgrade from negativity to positivity. It’s a strategic reframing that preserves critique. To be amused is still to notice the absurdity, the hypocrisy, the recurring scams of politics, celebrity, and love. It’s cynicism with a functioning appetite.

The key word is “try.” He’s not claiming enlightenment. He’s describing effort, a practiced discipline against outrage addiction. In a culture that rewards permanent disgust - feeds it, monetizes it, turns it into identity - Costello offers a quieter rebellion: laugh, not to excuse the rot, but to keep enough clarity to name it, and enough stamina to keep making art about it.