John Quotes

“Outside, the rain was bucketing down. We ran along the street, laughing at the madness of it all, and burst into Reece’s, where we had to queue for the set lunch of soup, chicken and trifle. Reece’s had no licence so, when we finally got a table, we toasted ourselves with water. But we didn’t care: we were on a high. A full church wedding with all the extras couldn’t have made me happier.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Most descriptions of Mimi that have appeared in print were based on interviews with her – she outlived John by eleven years. She loved to fuel the image of the stern but loving aunt who provided the secure backdrop to John’s success. But that wasn’t the Mimi I knew. She battered away at John’s self-confidence and left him angry and hurt.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“He was an extraordinary man: talented, flawed, a creative genius who sang movingly about love while often wounding those closest to him.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“was grateful, relieved and happy. I’d have understood if he had walked away, although it would have hurt. And although I hadn’t thought about marriage yet – believing we had years in which to make that kind of decision – I was certain that I loved him and wanted to be with him. So, on a summer’s night in my little room, John and I decided to marry, have our baby and become a family together. We loved each other and it was what we both wanted, even if it had been forced on us far sooner than we’d have wished.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Then one morning the nightmare happened. John and I were in bed together when I heard the landlady calling up the stairs – she was coming to empty the meter, which was in my room. We panicked. I wrapped myself in a sheet and fled into Dot’s room, leaving John to his fate. I heard the landlady go in and, a few minutes later, come out and go back down the stairs. Baffled, I went back into my room. No sign of John. It took me a minute or two to work out that he was under the large pile of blankets, coats and clothing on the bed. He’d grabbed whatever he could see from around the room and piled it on top of himself. Gasping for air and red-faced, he crawled out, cursing the landlady. We thought we’d got away with it – until”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“George’s father was a bus driver and he was planning to buy him his own bus.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“In March Brian heard that Decca weren’t interested. The chap he spoke to told him groups with guitars were on the way out and they didn’t like the boys’ sound.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“He took them to London on New Year’s Eve, while Brian went by train. Like the rest of the boys, Neil had never been to London.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“I met Brian soon after he had signed the Beatles. He was charming, polite, well spoken and I liked him. He accepted that I was John’s girlfriend, but he told John that it would be better if all girlfriends kept a low profile. I didn’t mind because I had no interest in the limelight. As long as I could be with John, I was content to stay in the shadows.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“I met Brian soon after he had signed the Beatles. He was charming, polite, well spoken and I liked him. He accepted that I was John’s girlfriend, but he told John that it would be better if all girlfriends kept a low profile. I didn’t mind because I had no interest in the limelight. As long as I could be”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Although George was quieter than the others too, when it came to banter he could give as good as he got. Just when you thought he wasn’t listening to one of John’s wicked teases he’d shoot back a withering line that had everyone in stitches.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Pete was getting on the others’ nerves. It wasn’t that he did anything wrong: he was a nice guy and a good enough drummer. It was simply that his personality was different: he preferred to sit on his own rather than join in with the others’ non-stop banter.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Those weeks in Hamburg were among the happiest times John and I had together. We were free and in love, life was full of promise and the sun shone.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“John and Paul always had a special link between them, a chemistry that added to the heat: they knew intuitively how to share the stage and the limelight, how to spar with each other and how to play the audience so that the girls went wild.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“My feelings for John were very different from those I’d had for any other boy: more powerful, more exciting and totally unshakeable. And I sensed in John the same strong feelings. Perhaps each of us recognised and was drawn to a deep need in the other. But at the time I didn’t analyse it. I simply felt certain that this was no passing fling. It was real love.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Once again John and I kissed good-bye.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John: A Biography

“It was also in a moment of sentiment, but perhaps of tenderness and love too, that John once said to Julian, ‘If anything ever happens to me, look for a white feather and you’ll know I’m there, looking out for you.’ I think of John every time I see a white feather.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“I understood Julian’s frustration with Yoko. I have always been sorry, and frustrated, that Julian and I could not have had a better relationship with her. I often wonder if her trouble in accepting Julian, or indeed John’s life before he met her, was due in part to the loss of her daughter.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Her nurse told Julia that Mimi’s last words had been, ‘I’m afraid of dying. I’ve been a wicked woman.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“It was from May I learnt that John’s reluctance to see or have contact with me was fuelled by Yoko, who told him constantly that I still loved him and would do anything to get him back. I had already suspected that this was so and, of course, I did still love John, but I had never considered the possibility of us getting back together: I had moved on to other relationships, just as he had.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Also, persistent rumours that John’s second marriage was far from happy and that Yoko was considering divorcing him heightened my sense that in time many things might have changed.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Not long before he died John gave an interview to Newsweek in which he said: ‘I hadn’t seen my first son grow up and now there’s a 17-year-old man on the phone talking about motorbikes. I was not there for his childhood at all. I was on tour. I don’t know how the game works, but there’s a price to pay for inattention to children. And if I don’t give him attention from zero to five then I’m damn well gonna have to give it to him from 16 to 20, because it’s owed, it’s like the law of the universe.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“John’s death had been so unnecessary and for both of us the hardest part of losing him was the loss of hope – for me that we would one day be friends again, able to laugh together, enjoy past memories and talk about the son we both loved, and for Julian that he and John would become close, understand each other and spend time together.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“John’s death had been so unnecessary and for both of us the hardest part of losing him was the loss of hope – for me that we would one day be friends again, able to laugh together, enjoy past memories and talk about the son we both loved,”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Relatives only want you for your money,’ Yoko reportedly told Julian. A sad and, in my experience of John’s family, untrue perception. I don’t think they were ever interested in his money: they just loved him because he was part of them.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Before Julian left, Yoko offered both him and Sean one of John’s guitars. Julian asked for one he had always loved, a black Yamaha inlaid with a pearl dragon. He remembered John playing Sean songs on it. Yoko told him he couldn’t have that one and gave him two others instead, which, sadly, he didn’t recognise and which therefore had no meaning for him. These were the only possessions of John’s Julian was ever given, yet when he returned to the Dakota building on another occasion he saw that Sean had the full use of all John’s musical equipment, including the guitar Julian had wanted.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“Julian showed immense courage and composure throughout the terrible days after his father’s death, and on top of this he had to endure being excluded from all Yoko’s public responses to John’s death.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“This statement, published in newspapers around the world, summed up so much of what Julian had had to go through. There was no mention of his being there with Yoko when she told Sean. Yoko even quoted Julian’s words as her own. There was no mention that John’s older son had also lost his father.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“At one point Fred drew Julian aside and told him quietly to be prepared for the fact that Yoko was not going to include him in any arrangements. ‘She will do anything to keep you in your place,’ he said. ‘Sean is the only person who matters to her. There’s simply no place for you in her world.’ Fred’s message was pretty brutal but it was proven absolutely true over the next weeks and months.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John

“At seventeen Julian had begun to look uncannily like John, the same aquiline profile, the same slim build. Julian wore his hair long, and in his leather jacket and jeans he could almost have been the young John.”
― Cynthia Lennon, John