John Lennon

I don’t intend to be a performing flea anymore. I was the dreamweaver, but although I’ll be around I don’t intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don’t want to die at 40.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

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

When I hold you in my arms and I feel my finger on your trigger I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun.

It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You’d wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?

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.

That was me under the bath and the water being held down. The director wanted it to look as real as possible so he told Keanu, in front of me, don’t go easy on her. So it was scary.

It just was a gradual development over the years. I mean last year was ‘all you need is Love.’ This year, it’s ‘all you need is Love and peace, baby.’ Give peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull together. You’re all geniuses, and you’re all beautiful. You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you’ll get it as soon as you like.

I saw Buddy Rich playing. He was wonderful, fantastic. I would say of just sheer technique he’s the best I’ve ever seen.

I remember when we were talking to one of the executives at the BBC. And he said, ‘Now hold on, this man (David Brent) is so incompetent why wouldn’t he be fired?’ and I said ‘Go and take a look around this building. Just go and knock on a few doors.’

What turning forty means to me- I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn’t used to have to do that, but now I do.

I come from a very small island which is packed with people. I mean, jam-packed with people. I’ve lived a life which has been pretty much full up with ambition, ideas, stimulus, creativity, some negativity which I try and avoid.

If we don’t get actively involved to at least mitigate Trump’s damage, things will not be OK. And yes, the sun will rise each day, but the continuing rotation of the earth should not be your baseline expectation of American society.

[On a drunken experience] I seemed to have lost all control of my body. My brother Gary found me outside the house in my underwear.

We were too rough at the edges to be a pop group.

I want to spend time with Oprah, and I don’t know what I need to do to make that happen.

I don’t try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

More idiots should just shut their mouths.

You want us as muses because you fear us as artists.

I have learned a lot about myself and come to deal with a lot of things that, at first, bothered me.

My mother was a gypsy, and she had a lot of dark blood in her, and her hair was very, very thick – she couldn’t even get a brush through it. So I have been very fortunate. And every time I go to cut it off, hairdressers refuse to do it.