John Lennon Quotes

“Music is everybody's business. It's only the publishers who think people own it”
― John Lennon

“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.”
― John Lennon

“We stood there for a minute or two, with John swaying gently against my arm. 'I'm feeling better,' he announced. Then he looked up at the stars. 'Wow..' he intoned. 'Look at that! Isn't that amazing?".
I followed his gaze. The stars did look good but they didn't look that good. It was very unlike John to be over the top in that way. I stared at him. He was wired-pin-sharp and quivering, resonating away like a human tuning fork.
No sooner had John uttered his immortal words about the stars than George and Paul came bursting out on the roof. They had come tearing up from the studio as soon as they found out where we were.
They knew why John was feeling unwell. Maybe everyone else did, too - everyone except for father-figure George Martin here!
It was very simple. John was tripping on LSD. He had taken it by mistake, they said - he had meant to take an amphetamine tablet. That hardly made any difference, frankly; the fact was that John was only too likely to imagine he could fly, and launch himself off the low parapet that ran around the roof. They had been absolutely terrified that he might do so.
I spoke to Paul about this night many years later, and he confirmed that he and George had been shaken rigid when they found out we were up on the roof. They knew John was having a what you might call a bad trip. John didn't go back to Weybridge that night; Paul took him home to his place, in nearby Cavendish Road. They were intensely close, remember, and Paul would do almost anything for John. So, once they were safe inside, Paul took a tablet of LSD for the first time, 'So I could get with John' as he put it- be with him in his misery and fear.

What about that for friendship?”
― George Martin, With A Little Help From My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper

“One thing I can tell you is you have to be free. Come together, right now, over me.”
― John Lennon

“We could argue about what constitutes the creepiest line in pop music, but for me it's early Beatles- John Lennon, actually- singing 'I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.”
― Stephen King, Joyland

“spring passes
and one remembers one's innocence
summer passes
and one remembers one's exuberance
autumn passes
and one remembers one's reverence
winter passes
and one remembers one's perseverance
there is a season that never passes and that is the season of glass

-- Season of Glass, 1981”
― Yoko Ono

“Before John could even get through the first verse, who bursts through the door and jumps right into the fray, lips a'kissin' and hips a'wigglin'? That's right, kids, everbody's favorite zombie hunter. Mick Jagger strode right up to John, raised his arms to the sky, and said, 'O zombie Lennon! It ends here.”
― Alan Goldsher, Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion

“You know...give peace a chance, not shoot people for peace. All we need is love. I believe it. it's damned hard but I absolutely believe it. We're not the first to say 'Imagine no countries' or 'Give peace a chance' but we're carrying that torch, like the Olympic torch, passing it from hand to hand, to each other, to each country, to each generation. That's our job...I've never claimed divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answer to life. I can only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can, but only as honestly as I can, no more, no less.

"I used to think that the world was doing it to me and that the world owed me something, and that either the conservatives or the socialists or the fascists or the communists or the Christians or the Jews were doing something to me, and when you're a teenybopper that's what you think. I'm 40 now. I don't think that anymore, 'cause I found out it doesn't fucking work. The thing goes on anyway and all you're doing is jacking off and screaming about what your mommy or daddy or society did...I have found out personally...that I am responsible for it as well as them. I am part of them.”
― Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life

“Captain Midlands: "I met the real you once."
John (Lennon) the Skrull: "You're meeting the real me now."
Captain Midlands: "I told him to get his bleedin' hair cut.”
― Paul Cornell, X-Men: Wisdom - Rudiments of Wisdom

“Fame had kept me from getting laid that night. Fame would make it so other people would bother me, follow me around with cameras, be all up in my shit, keep me from doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. Fame could even potentially kill me. It killed a lot of people: John Lennon, Princess Diana, Selena.”
― A.D. Aliwat, Alpha

“They'd retreated to the country with two passports only. From the outside it looked like death. People could pound the walls all they wanted, but they'd never find the door. Nobody could guess at the gardens inside.”
― Janet Fitch, Paint it Black

“On the cover that leaned against the dirty couch, John and Yoko pressed together for a kiss they would never finish. People were always trashing Yoko Ono, blaming her for breaking up the Beatles, but Josie knew they were just jealous that John preferred Yoko to some bloated megaband. Nobody ever loved a lover. Because love was a private party, and nobody got on the guest list.”
― Janet Fitch, Paint it Black

“Deed of the virtuous, dead and buried
World under curfew, solitary
My love never peaked now my soul is weak
Leaving reality dimmed and blurry

Imagination wild, Johnny Lennon
Speaking up my mind, taste my venom
Blinded by the lies, eyes in lemon
Paradise I will find, Day of Judgement”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Letter 19

“La vida es aquello que ta sucediendo mientras te empeñas en hacer otros planes.”
― John Lennon

“La vida es aquello que te va sucediendo mientras te empeñas en hacer otros planes.”
― John Lennon

“Wenner’s unabashed idol worship had so often embarrassed them—starfucker, they grumbled behind his back—but now here he was with an actual Beatle. And Yoko! Who could deny this? The hirsute supercouple were smaller than anybody imagined, but John Lennon still towered over Jann Wenner, who at five six so often found himself gazing up at his heroes like a boy vampire.”
― Joe Hagan, Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine

“Fans of John Lennon refuse to mention his killer's name. It's smart to starve these spree shooters of the oxygen of infamy they crave.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The death of their manager Brian Epstein was the beginning of the end for The Beatles. While Yoko Ono did try to fill the power vacuum and exacerbate the cracks created by Epstein's loss, she was not solely responsible for The Fab Four's demise. As with every big event, there are many actors, factors and complexities at play and no one simple explanation for everything.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Everybody of my generation has the same memory. We were twelve or thirteen or we were twenty-one, for that matter, and we were going to be veterinarians or we were, like Ringo, going to own a hairdresser’s parlor. We walked into the record store and saw the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We thought together, 'Life can be other than it has been.”
― Curtis White, Idea of Home

“For the next 16 hours, fueled by coffee and amphetamines, I wrestled with John Lennon's scrawls and codes and symbols. As I transcribed his words, I said them out loud like an incantation, and I began to feel Lennon's energy flowing through me.”
― Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon

“I grew up with John Lennon at my side, like a big brother.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“For those of us who identify with the movements of the sixties this period represents not so much a decade as a state of consciousness, characterized by the transpersonal expansion, the questioning of authority, a sense of empowerment, and the experience of sensuous beauty and community. This state of consciousness reached well into the seventies. In fact, one could say that the sixties came to an end only in December 1980 with the shot that killed John Lennon.”
― Fritjof Capra, Uncommon Wisdom : Conversations With Remarkable People

“Just because everybody loves The Beatles doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with The Beatles.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“When you realize you have lost a battle. Learn to live with it remember. Everything is going to be okay in the end. If it's not then it's not THE END.”
― Awais Zafar

“If you can write like Matthew, Mark, Luke or John Lennon then I will read it”
― Kevin Kolenda

“In This Darkness by Stewart Stafford

A limo drove through mansion gates,
Rock star John saw her wait again,
Hysterically begging for autographs,
The gates closed behind the limo.

John said stop, and exited the car,
"I'll sign it for you tomorrow, 100%,"
"No," she said, "sign tonight... now,"
He strode towards his home gates.

He rummaged in his coat pockets,
Ripping a cigarette packet to sign,
He found a tiny pencil in his pants,
Trailing breath vapour in the night.

"I can't see you in this darkness,"
A chilling laugh from the fan's side,
Three muzzle flashes, John died,
Contorted on a bloody driveway.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“John Lennon once claimed that his band, The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Lennon’s life paralleled Christ’s - both came from nothing, became figureheads of worldwide cults and changed the world. They also had premature, painful and undeserved deaths at the hands of others who envied and craved their abilities, influence and popularity. In the late Sixties, Lennon even seemed to adopt a Christ-like image with his long hair, beard and the various robes he started wearing, perhaps as a sly visual parody of his previous remarks.”
― Stewart Stafford

“I Am The Cobra by Stewart Stafford

A prisoner in his distant brain,
Drowning man courts stardom,
Became an ass in assassination,
A zilch begetting zilch ad infinitum.

Helicopter Christian and Satanist,
Cauliflower man, now a cabbage,
In judgement, cutting off phonies,
Blind to himself in lost daydreams.

In the cobra's deadly surprise strike,
The attacker's venom splashed back,
Bars in his head now physical restraints,
A malingering, slow death from snakebite.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“You’ve got your answer then, haven’t you?'
Lydia nods. She has. She knew it all along. But sometimes it takes an artificially intelligent simulation of a long dead Beatle to put things in perspective.”
― Eddie Robson, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words

“Chaos Cocktail by Stewart Stafford

Herky-jerky's hanky-panky,
Wakey-wakey, eggs n' bakey!
Cosmic Mercury's retrograde trick,
Nilsson's Brandy Alexander kick.

John heard Bermuda's jingle-jangle,
Storm surge in an Exorcist Triangle!
Sea shanties upending Behan's hive,
All stout hornets jigged and jived.

Yoko's "Oh, no!" on firmer ground,
Her ageing mariner didn't drown,
Lonely Ringo plays bingo bongo,
Paul, mugged down near the Congo.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford