"Christianity
will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue
with that; I'm right and will be proved right. We're
more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will
go first - rock and roll or Christianity." JWL
"I'm not saying we're better or greater,
or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person, or
God as a thing, or whatever it is. I just said what
I said, and it was wrong, or it was taken wrong. And
now it's all this." JWL
"Am I crazy or am I a genius? I don't
think I'm either." JWL
"I'm not going to change the way I
look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've
always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life
and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of
those people." JWL
"When I was about 12, I used to think
I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. ...If there
is such a thing as genius....I am one, if there isn't
I don't care." JWL
"When I was a Beatle I thought we were
the best fucking group in the god damn world, and
believing that is what made us what we were." JWL
"The idea of being a rock and roll musician
sort of suited my talents and mentality. The freedom
was great, but then I found out I wasn't free. I'd
got boxed in...The whole Beatle thing is just beyond
comprehension...subconciously I was crying for help."
JWL
"We are both sensitive people and we
were hurt a lot by it. I mean, we couldn't understand
it. When you're in love, when somebody says something
like, 'How can you be with that woman?' you say, 'What
do you mean? I am with this goddess of love, the fulfillment
of my whole life. Why are you saying this? Why do
you want to throw a rock at her or punish me for being
in love with her?' Our love helped us survive it,
but some of it was pretty violent. There were a few
times when we nearly went under, but we managed to
survive it and here we are. [Looks upward] Thank you,
thank you, thank you." JWL
"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."
JWL
"I'd never met a woman I considered
as intelligent as me. That sounds big-headed, but
every woman I met was either a dolly-chick, or a sort
of screwed-up intellectual chick. And of course, in
the field I was in, I didn't meet many intellectual
people anyway. I always had this dream of meeting
an artist, an artist girl who would be like me. And
I thought it was a myth, but then I met Yoko and that
was it." JWL
"We realized there's something wrong
here, if everybody was upset by the fact that two
people were naked." JWL
"I think the basic thing nobody asks
is why do people takes drugs of any sort? And that
question has to be resolved before you can think,
well, what can we do for the poor drug addict? Why
do we have to 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?.." JWL
"In 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds'
I was visualizing Alice in Wonderland, an image of
this female who would come and save me - a girl with
kaleidescope eyes who would be the real love of my
life. Lucy turned out to be Yoko." JWL
"We've broken down a few barriers between
us, which we had to do because we had two big egos,
two individual artists - and with love we overcame
that." JWL
"We've got this gift of love, but love
is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it
and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going
to get on by itself. You've got to keep on watering
it. You've got to really look after it and nurture
it." JWL
"Before Yoko and I met, we were half
a person. You know there's an old myth about people
being half and the other half being in the sky, or
in heaven or on the other side of the universe or
a mirror image. But we are two halves, and together
we're a whole." JWL
"If being an egomaniac means I believe
in what I do and in my art or my music, then in that
respect you can call me that...I believe in what I
do, and I'll say it." JWL
"We haven't been apart for more than
one hour in two years. Everything we do is together,
and that's what gives us our strength." JWL
"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."
JWL
"Songwriting is about getting the demon
out of me. It's like being posessed. 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..." JWL
"Everything I've ever done is out.
I don't have boxes of unreleased stuff. There's nothing
in the files. I can never keep anything unless I don't
like the sound of it or it didn't work. If I can sing
it to an engineer, I can sing it to anyone..." JWL
"Possession isnt nine-tenths of the
law its nine-tenths of the problem." JWL
"It doesn't matter how long my hair
is or what colour my skin is or whether I'm a woman
or a man." JWL
"I always was a rebel...but on the other
hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted...and not
just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But
I cannot be what I am not." JWL
"It was like being in the eye of a
hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow,
how did I get here?" JWL
"The writing of the Beatles, or John
and Paul's contribution to the Beatles in the late
sixties - had a kind of depth to it, a more mature,
more intellectual approach. We were different people,
we were older. We knew each other in all kinds of
different ways than when we wrote together as teenagers
and in our older twenties." JWL
"We were all on this ship in the sixties,
our generation, a ship going to discover the New World.
And the Beatles were in the crow's nest of that ship
... We were part of it and contributed what we contributed.
I can't designate what we did and didn't do. It depends
on how each individual was impressed by the Beatles
or how our shock wave went to different people. We
were going through the changes, and all we were saying
was, it's raining up here, or there's land or there's
a sun or we can see a seagull. We were just reporting
what was happening to us." JWL
"I was too scared to break away from
the Beatles, which I'd been looking to do since we
stopped touring. And so I was sort of vaguely looking
for somewhere to go but didn't have the nerve to really
step out into the boat myself, so I sort of hung around,
and when I met Yoko and fell in love, my God, this
is different than anything before. This is more than
a hit record. It's more than gold. It's more than
everything...When I met Yoko is when you meet your
first woman, and you leave the guys at the bar, and
you don't go play football anymore. Once I found the
woman, the boys became of no interest whatsoever,
other than they were like old school friends." JWL
"I've always thought there was this
underlying thing in Paul's 'Get Back.' When we were
in the studio recording it, every time he sang the
line 'Get back to where you once belonged," he'd look
at Yoko." JWL
"If everyone demanded peace instead
of another television set, then there'd be peace."
JWL
"Everything positive is nice, I like
it. Just the effect it had on people was good, I think."
JWL
"Once you're so depressed that you get
into drugs, once you're on them, it's very, very hard
to see the light or to have any kind of hope. All
you think about is the drug, and it's no good to us
preaching at people and saying don't take them. Because
that doesn't work. It's like the church telling you
not to drink or not to have sex when you're a kid.
There's nothing on earth gonna do it. But if people
take any notice of what we say, we say we've been
through the drug scene, man, and there's nothing like
being straight. You need hope, and hope is something
that you build within yourself and with your friends.
It's a very difficult situation, drugs ... 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 personal,
social, emotional reasons. It's something to be avoided
if one can help it." JWL
"With us it's a teacher - pupil relationship.
That's what people don't understand. She's the teacher
and I'm the pupil. I'm the famous one. I'm supposed
to know everything. But she taught me everything I
fucking know." JWL
"Rituals are important. Nowadays it's
hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being
hip." JWL
"We're all in a bag, you know?...I
was in a pop bag, going round and round, in my own
little clique. And she [Yoko] was in her own little
avant-guarde clique, going round and round...So we
just came up with the word. If you'd ask us what bagism
is, we'd say, 'We're all in a bag, baby." JWL
"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." JWL
"People want peace. And you've got
do sell it and sell it and sell it. So we do the bed-ins
and they say, 'What? They're in bed? What's this?'
And all we're doing really is donating our holiday.
We get tired and it's...more convenient for us to
stay in one spot than go around doing press conferences."
JWL
"Well, crying for it wasn't enough.
The thing the sixties did was show us the possibilities
and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't
the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility."
JWL
"The only time we took drugs was when
we were without hope and the only way we got out of
it was with hope and if we can sustain the hope then
we don't need drugs, liquor or anything. But if we
loose hope, what can you do? What is there to do?"
JWL
"If The Beatles or the 60's had a message,
it was 'Learn to swim. And once you've learned - swim!"
JWL
"Living is easy with your eyes closed..."
JWL
"Now, in the sixties we were naive,
like children. Everybody went back to their rooms,
and said, 'We didn't get a wonderful world of just
flowers and peace and happy chocolate, and it won't
be just pretty and beautiful all the time,' and just
like babies everyone went back to their rooms and
sulked. 'We're going to stay in our rooms and play
rock and roll and not do anything else, because the
world's a horrible place, because it didn't give us
everything we cried for.' Right?" JWL
"I still don't know how to express the
really delicate personal stuff. People think that
Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties
of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop
music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still
search for other ways of expressing myself. Songwriting
is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down
words that have to rhyme." JWL
"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." JWL
"Nothing will stop me, and whether
I'm here or wherever I may be, I'll always have the
same feelings, I'll say what I feel." JWL
"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..." JWL
"Yoko was the only one who didn't put
me down through that period, because a) she knew I
was suffering, and b) she said, 'You didn't kill anyone.
You didn't abuse anyone.' And I thought, Okay, okay,
she doesn't mind it, so I'm not going to give a damn
whether the reporter likes it or not." JWL
"The worst was being separated from
Yoko and realizing that I literally could not survive
without her." JWL
"We were separated for eighteen months.
The Beatles didn't get back together again, did they?
So it was not Yoko who kept them apart." JWL
"When [Yoko and I] got back together,
we decided that this is our life. That having a baby
was important to us, and that everything else was
subsidary to that, and therefore everything else had
to be abandoned. I mean, abandonment gave us the fulfillment
we were looking for and the space to breathe." JWL
"The joy is still there when I see
Sean. He didn't come out of my belly, but my God,
I've made his bones, because I've attended to every
meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims
like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so
proud of all his things. But he is my biggest pride."
JWL
"The pressures of being a parent are
equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious
parent, and really look to that little being's mental
and physical health is a responsibility which most
of us, including me, avoid most of the time, because
it's too hard...To put it loosely, the reason why
kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility
of bringing them up..." JWL
"If [Sean] doesn't see me a few days
or if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of
get a glimpse of him, or if I'm feeling depressed
without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on
it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer
afford to have artistic depressions. If I start wallowing
in a depression, he'll start coming down with stuff,
so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes
I can't, because something will make me depressed
and sure as hell he'll get a cold or trap his finger
in a door or something, and so now I have sort of
more reason to stay healthy or bright..." JWL
"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" JWL
"Anybody who knows our history knows
that we went through all hell together - through miscarriages
and terrible times." JWL
"For a long time I wasn't listening
to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio,
because it would cause me to get sweaty--it would
bring back memories I didn't want to know about, or
I would get that feeling that I'm not alive 'cause
I'm not making it. And if it was good, I hated it
'cause I wasn't doing it. And if it was bad, I was
furious 'cause I could've done it better..." JWL
"The first year I had this sort of
feeling in the back of my mind that I ought to [be
doing music]. And I'd go through periods of panic,
because I was not in Billboard or being seen at Studio
54 with Mick and Bianca. I mean, I didn't exist anymore.
It would become like a paranoia, and then it would
go away, because I'd be involved with the baby. And
I realized there was a life without it - life after
death." JWL
"Why don't people believe us when we
say we're simply in love?" JWL
"I've been baking bread and looking
after the baby...Everyone else who has asked me that
question over the last few years says. 'But what else
have you been doing?' To which I say, 'Are you kidding?'
Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows,
is a full-time job. After I made the loaves [of bread,]
I felt like I had conquered something. But as I watched
the bread being eaten, I thought, Well, Jesus, don't
I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?" JWL
"When I was cleaning the cat shit and
feeding Sean, she [Yoko] was sitting in rooms full
of smoke with men in three-piece suits that they couldn't
button." JWL
"Listen, if somebody's gonna impress
me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko Ono, there
comes a point when the emperor has no clothes. There
comes a point when I will see. So for all you folks
out there who think that I'm having the wool pulled
over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. Not that
you think less of Yoko, because that's your problem.
What I think of her is what counts! Because - fuck
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
the baby!" JWL
"They want to hold onto something they
never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to
have some interest in me as an individual artist or
even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood
everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with
Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything.
They're just jacking off to - it could be anybody.
Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off
to Mick Jagger, okay? I don't need it." JWL
"It just was a gradual development
over the years. I mean last year was 'all you need
is Love.' This year, it's 'all you need is Love and
peace, baby.' Give peace a chance, and remember Love.
The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence.
You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull
together. You're all geniuses, and you're all beautiful.
You don't need anyone to tell you who you are. You
are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think
peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you'll
get it as soon as you like." JWL
"My role in society, or any artist's
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." JWL
"Those in the cheaper seats clap. The
rest of you rattle your jewelry." JWL
"Your Majesty, I am returning my MBE
in protest against Britain's involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra
thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and
against 'Cold Turkey' slipping down in the charts.
With love, John Lennon" JWL
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