John Lennon

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

I’ve had the boyhood thing of being Elvis. Now I want to be with my best friend, and my best friend’s my wife. Who could ask for anything more?

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

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.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

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…

The valley stream’s rushing sound is the eloquent tongue of Buddha. The mountain’s vibrant colours are nothing but the Buddha’s form.

The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman’s construction, is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life. During twenty-three days in every month (in the absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. Also, she wants that candle – yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart.

No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.

I’ve been up the mountain and I had a choice. Should I come down? So I came down. God said, Okay, you’ve been up on the mountain, now you go down. You’re on your own, free. Check in later, but now you’re on your own.

We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

It is a naked city. Faith is not pampered, nor hope encouraged; there is no place to lay one’s exhaustion: but instead pinnacles skewer it undisguised against vacancy.

Zen has no business with ideas.

Don’t rush anything. When the time is right, it’ll happen.

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

The instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

In a mind clear as still water, even the waves, breaking, are reflecting its light.

Be the witness of your thoughts. You are what observes, not what you observe.

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.