"I'm not really a career person; I'm a gardener, basically."
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John Lennon quotes (page 14 of 32)
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"The dream is over. I gotta get down to reality. The good old days is garbage."
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"All kids draw and write poetry and everything, and some of us last until we're about eighteen, but most drop off at about twelve when some guy comes up and says, "You're no good." That's all we get told all our lives. "You haven't got the ability. You're a cobbler." It happened to all of us, but if somebody had told me all my life, "Yeah, you're a great artist," I would have been a more secure person."
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"Now, in the sixties we were naive, like children. Everybody went back to their rooms and said 'We didn't get a wonderful world of just flowers and peace and happy chocolate, and it won't be just pretty and beautiful all the time,' and just like babies everyone went back to their rooms and sulked. 'We're going to stay in our rooms and play rock and roll and not do anything else, because the world's a nasty horrible place, because it didn't give us everything we cried for.' Right? Crying for it wasn't enough."
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"Speaking as somebody who's been in the drug scene, it's not something you can go on and on doing, you know. It's like drink, or anything, you've got to come to terms with it. You know, like too much food, or too much anything. You've got to get out of it. You're left with yourself all the time, whatever you do--you know, meditation, drugs or anything. But you've got to get down to your own god and your own temple in your head."
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"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..."
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"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."
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"I was the walrus, but now I am John. And so my friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over."
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"One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were . . . . It happened bit by bit, until . . . you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand -- the people you hated when you were ten."
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"I'm cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I'm not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That's why I really don't want to be labeled a cynic."
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"The continual awareness of what was going on made me feel ashamed I wasn't saying anything. I burst out because I could no longer play that game any more, it was just too much for me."
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"The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction."
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"Life's what happens when you're making other plans."
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"Love is real, real is love."
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"The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was 'normal'."
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"People think the Beatles know what's going on. We don't. We're just doing it."
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"Imagine there's no heaven... it's easy if you try."
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"There is nothing conceptually better than rock 'n' roll. No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on Whole Lot of Shaking for my money. Or maybe I'm like our parents: that's my period and I dig it and I'll never leave it."
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"Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground."
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"The worst drugs are as bad as anybody's told you. It's just a dumb trip, which I can't condemn people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one's own personal, social, emotional reasons. It's something to be avoided if one can help it."
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