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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.
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The idea of being a rock and roll musician sort of suited my talents and mentality. The freedom was great, but then I found out I wasn't free. I'd got boxed in...The whole Beatle thing is just beyond comprehension ... subconsciously I was crying for help.
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At the record company meeting Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do, so in the end I just said, 'I think you're daft. I want a divorce.'
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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.
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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.
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We all been playing those mind games forever, Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil, Doing the mind guerrilla, Some call it magic the search for the grail. Love is the answer and you know that for sure, Love is a flower you got to let it grow...
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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.
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Don't need a gun to blow your mind...
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How can you talk about power to the people unless you realise the people is both sexes.
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We were really professional by the time we got to the States; we had learned the whole game. When we arrived here we knew how to handle the press; the British press were the toughest in the world and we could handle anything. We were all right.
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I thought of nothing else but rock 'n' roll; apart from sex and food and money--but that's all the same thing, really.
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God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
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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?
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All the revolutions have happened when a Fidel or Marx or Lenin or whatever, who were intellectuals, were able to get through to the workers. They got a good pocket of people together and the workers seemed to understand that they were in a repressed state.
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There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic.
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If you want peace, you won't get it with violence.
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I just sat all night looking at him, saying, 'Wow, it's incredible.' When Yoko woke up, I told her, 'He's fine,' and we cried.
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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.
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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.
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If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
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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.
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We're crazy about this city. Los Angeles? That's just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for the trip to San Francisco.
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New York is what Paris was in the twenties. . . the center of the art world. And we want to be in the center. It's the greatest place on earth. . . I've got a lot of friends here and I even brought my own cash.
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Either I'm a genius or I'm mad, which is it? "No," I said, "I can't be mad because nobody's put me away; therefore I'm a genius." Genius is a form of madness and we're all that way. But I used to be coy about it, like me guitar playing. But if there's such a thing as genius - I am one. And if there isn't, I don't care.