 |
(no category)
|
|
I don't intend to be a performing flea anymore. I was the dreamweaver, but although I'll be around I don't intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don't want to die at 40.
-John Lennon, Note on the song Goodbye. John Lennon was killed when he was 40 years old.
|
|
Ambition
|
|
|
You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.
-John Lennon
|
|
Artist, The
|
|
|
My role in society, or any artist or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.
-John Lennon, Interview, KFRC RKO Radio, given the day of his death., December 8, 1980
|
|
Authors & Writing
|
|
|
Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them...
-John Lennon
|
|
Beatles, The
|
|
|
If The Beatles or the 60's had a message, it was 'Learn to swim. And once you've learned - swim!'
-John Lennon
|
|
|
We've been on our peace gig, as we call it, for a year solid. And people say, 'Do you think it's having any effect?' I can't answer that. It's like asking me in the Cavern, 'Are you gonna make it?' In the back of my mind I thought, I'm gonna make it, but I couldn't lay it on the line. And I think that peace is more tangible than Beatles.
-John Lennon
|
|
|
-John Lennon, responding to the question Are you a genius?
|
|
|
I thought of nothing else but rock 'n' roll; apart from sex and food and money--but that's all the same thing, really.
-John Lennon
|
|
|
Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war --for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more.
-John Lennon, Quoted in: Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, vol. 1
|
|
I realized that kids everywhere go for the same stuff; and seeing as we'd done it in England, there's no reason why we couldn't do it in America too.
-John Lennon, copyright Apple Corps Limited
|
|
Belief
|
|
|
I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now? Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
-John Lennon
|
|
Certainty
|
|
|
The more I see the less I know for sure.
-John Lennon
|
|
Children
|
|
|
You can't cheat kids. If you cheat them when they're children they'll make you pay when they're sixteen or seventeen by revolting against you or hating you or all those so-called teenage problems. I think that's finally when they're old enough to stand up to you and say, 'What a hypocrite you've been all this time. You've never given me what I really wanted, which is you'.
-John Lennon
|
|
Christianity
|
|
|
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first -- rock and roll or Christianity.
-John Lennon
|
|
|
We're more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don't know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.
-John Lennon
|
|
|
Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
-John Lennon
|
|
Confidence
|
|
|
If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that ... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.
-John Lennon
|
|
Control
|
|
|
Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who can control me is me, and that's just barely possible. And that's the lesson I'm learning. If someone's going to impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko, then there comes a point where the emperor has no clothes 'cause I'm naive, but I'm not stupid. For all you folks out there who think I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. But if you think you know me, or you have some part of me because of the music, and then you think I'm being controlled like a dog on a leash because I do things with her, then screw you, brother or sister, you don't know what's happening. I'm not here for you, I'm here for me and her, and now the baby.
-John Lennon
|
|
Dreams
|
|
|
You make your own dream. That's the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko's story. That's what I'm saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself. That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There's nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you.
-John Lennon
|
|
Drinking
|
|
|
When you're thirty-five, you can't take as much booze ... and I always got a little violent on drink...So it was kind of self-destructive suicide side of me, which is resolving itself for the better, I believe, because I never enjoyed it...
-John Lennon
|
|
Drugs
|
|
|
The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?
-John Lennon
|
|
|
The worst drugs are as bad as anybody's told you. It's just a dumb trip, which I can't condemn people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one's own personal, social, emotional reasons. It's something to be avoided if one can help it.
-John Lennon
|
|
Fear
|
|
|
My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.
-John Lennon, Interview: Playboy (Chicago), September, 1980
|
|
God
|
|
|
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
-John Lennon
|
|
Humor
|
|
|
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you
-John Lennon, Royal Variety Performance, London, quoted in John Winston Lennon, pt. 1, ch. 11, R. Colman (1984)
|
Books by and about John Lennon