"When real music comes to me - the music of the spheres, the music that surpasseth 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." "Will all the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry." [At Royal Variety Performance 4th November 1963] "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." "My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all." "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." "We're all Christ and we're all Hitler. We are trying to make Christ's message contemporary. We want Christ to win. What would he have done if he had advertisements, T.V., records, films and newspapers? The miracle today is communication. So Let's use it." "Love means having to say you're sorry every fifteen minutes." "My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple." "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that, I'm right and will be proved right. We're (the Beatles) more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me. I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity." (to London's Evening Standard, 1966) (looking back on his "more popular than Jesus" comment) "I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days." "I've made two 'discoveries' in my life: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. I think that's a pretty damned good choice." (on reconciling with Yoko in 1975, after more than a year apart) "The separation didn't work out." (late 1960s) "My name's not John Beatle, it's John Lennon." "Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground." "Reality leaves a lot to the imagination." "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." "If everybody wished for peace instead of another television set, then there would be peace." "The more I see, the less I know for sure." "Elvis really died the day he joined the army. That's when they killed him, and the rest was a living death." "Before Elvis there was nothing" [Asked by a reporter if Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world]: "In the world? He's not even the best drummer in The Beatles!" "Time enjoyed wasting was not wasted." (on meeting his teenage crush, Brigitte Bardot, in 1968) "I was on acid, and she was on her way out." "Well, we all know about "Yesterday." I have had so much accolade for "Yesterday." That is Paul's song, of course, and Paul's baby. Well done. Beautiful - and I never wished I had written it." [From the 1980 Playboy Interviews] My wife forced me to become avant-garde when all I wanted to be was Tom Jones. "Elvis dies and his manager lives. Our manager died and we lived." "I was eating and drinking like a pig, and I was fat as a pig, dissatisfied with myself, and subconsciously I was crying for help. It was my fat Elvis period."