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 kaleidoscope eyes who would be the real love of my life. Lucy turned out to be Yoko.

What I'm trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All those who are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in their mind. The acid dream is over, that is what I'm trying to tell them.

I think it's the best thing I've ever done. I think it's realistic, and it's true to the me that has been developing over the years. I like first-person music.

I don't want to grow up but I'm sick of not growing up -​ that way. I'll find a different way of not growing up. There's a better way of doing it than torturing your body.

If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

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...

You're only awake when you realise you're awake and when you're dreaming, it is just as real, whatever happens is just as real - whether you actually do die in a dream or fulfil whatever you're doing in a dream, it's, there's nobody to tell me it isn't as real as this now, because how do you know?