John Lennon

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!

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.

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

I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

I’d never met a woman I considered as intelligent as me. That sounds bigheaded, but every woman I met was either a dolly-chick, or a sort of screwed-up intellectual chick. And of course, in the field I was in, I didn’t meet many intellectual people anyway. I always had this dream of meeting an artist, an artist girl who would be like me. And I thought it was a myth, but then I met Yoko and that was it.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.

There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.

I learn something new every day.

Actually, I think the more Ben [Taylor] sings, the less like James he sounds.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It’s over; it’s on the record.

You’ve got to learn your instrument.

All that I’ve played, all that I’ve sung, I couldn’t have done any other way.

I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.

If there is no dance, there is not music.

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

If a song’s about something I’ve experienced or that could’ve happened to me it’s good. But if it’s alien to me, I couldn’t lend anything to it. Because that’s what soul is all about.

Everything I’ve ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.