John Lennon

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.

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.

I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.

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.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

Music is the shorthand of emotion

My fans are the best in the world! They’ve grown up with me and stayed with me through this entire journey.

The other day I came across a recording I made of a night at my apartment when I was living with Kris Kristofferson. Bob Dylan had been around earlier and we were all passing around the guitar. Whenever it came to my turn I would run into the kitchen and say I’d left the coffee on the stove or something. Shyness. Scared to perform.

Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition.

Jazz is a living music; since its beginning has expressed the feelings, dreams and hopes of the people.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

The true beauty of music is that it connects people.

One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say anything sarcastic.

The deeper you get into the music allows the ability to appreciate art and all other forms of expression.

Jazz music is an aural souvenir of mankind’s attempt to express the intangible, the heart, the soul, through art.

I don’t care about the rules, if I don’t break the rules at least 10x every song then I’m not doing my job.