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Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group.
John Lennon The Beatles
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When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom "Let it be".
John Lennon The Beatles
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Reporter lady: What's that color? John: Hm. I'd call this a color!
John Lennon The Beatles
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The first line of I Am The Walrus was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko.
John Lennon The Beatles
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That radicalism of the '70s was phony, really, because it was out of guilt. I'd always felt guilty that I made money, so I had to give it away or lose it. I don't mean I was a hypocrite. When I believe, I believe right down to the roots.
John Lennon The Beatles
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He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.
John Lennon The Beatles
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Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.
John Lennon The Beatles
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Of course it's difficult to know what the workers are really thinking because the capitalist press always only quotes mouthpieces like Vic Feather anyway.
John Lennon The Beatles
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I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.
John Lennon The Beatles
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As someone from the working class I was always interested in Russia and China and everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist game.
John Lennon The Beatles
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I've always been politically minded and against the status quo. It's pretty basic when you're brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere.
John Lennon The Beatles
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Violence begets violence, you know. And you can't kill off all the violent people or all the murderers. We'd have to kill off the government.
John Lennon The Beatles
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You can manicure a cat but can you caticure a man?
John Lennon The Beatles
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When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
John Lennon The Beatles
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For a long time I wasn't listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty. It would bring back memories I didn't want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I'm not alive 'cause I'm not making it. And if it was good, I hated it 'cause I wasn't doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious 'cause I could've done it better.
John Lennon The Beatles
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People never grasp the fact that they're going to have to go through the same thing again. They get to the sort of five-year stretch or the seven-year itch or whatever these tension points are that seem to be organic, built in, like the tide coming in and going out. It's like every time the tide goes out you quit--you move your house or something.
John Lennon The Beatles
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I'm really very embarrassed about my guitar playing, in one way, because it's very poor. I can never move but I can make a guitar speak.
John Lennon The Beatles
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The whole thing died in my mind long before the rumpus started. We used to believe the Beatles myth just as much as the public and we were in love with them just the same way. But we were four individuals who eventually recovered our individualities after being submerged in a myth.
John Lennon The Beatles
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I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.
John Lennon The Beatles
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I had a lot of it in my day, but I don't like it. It's a dumb drug. Your whole concentration goes on getting the next fix. I find caffeine easier to deal with.
John Lennon The Beatles
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There is not one thing that's Beatle music. How can they talk about it like that? What is Beatle music? Walrus or Penny Lane? Which? It's too diverse: I Want to Hold Your Hand or Revolution Number Nine?
John Lennon The Beatles
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When real music comes to me - the music of the spheres, the music that surpasses understanding - that has nothing to do with me, cause I'm just the channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium... those moments are what I live for.
John Lennon The Beatles
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You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
John Lennon The Beatles
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If Sean doesn't see me a few days or if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of get a glimpse of him, or if I'm feeling depressed without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer afford to have artistic depressions. If I start wallowing in a depression, he'll start coming down with stuff, so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes I can't, because something will make me depressed and sure as hell he'll get a cold or trap his finger in a door or something, and so now I have sort of more reason to stay healthy or bright.
John Lennon The Beatles
