I never listen to the radio. If it's bad, I make fun of it, and if it's good, I get jealous that I didn't think of it.
John LennonI regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.
John LennonSongwriting 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 LennonNow, 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 nasty horrible place, because it didn't give us everything we cried for.' Right? Crying for it wasn't enough.
John Lennon