John Lennon

I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream.

You can’t cheat kids. If you cheat them when they’re children they’ll make you pay when they’re sixteen or seventeen by revolting against you or hating you or all those so-called teenage problems. I think that’s finally when they’re old enough to stand up to you and say, ‘What a hypocrite you’ve been all this time. You’ve never given me what I really wanted, which is you’.

The joy is still there when I see Sean. 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 his things. But he is my biggest pride.

I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was – and loved it all.

Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

Players are coming from other backgrounds: rock, folk, ethnic music. It’s changing Jazz for the better.

A Jazz musician is supposed to find his voice, find his niche and do his thing.

I have no one style.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.

I’ve had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.

There’s only two types of music. The stuff you can write down and the stuff you can’t. The stuff that you can’t write down is Jazz. Everything else is Polka.

I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

When I write songs that touch on social relevance, all you have to do is pick up a newspaper.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.