John Lydon Quotes

I don't believe in the reality of painting, so I use different styles like clothes: it's a way to disguise myself.

Formerly pictures used to move towards completion in progressive stages. Each day would bring something new. A picture was a sum of additions. With me, picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture, then I destroy it. But in the long run nothing is lost; the red that I took away from one place turns up somewhere else.

It was really a focus on how to in some ways keep moving in this direction towards something that allowed me to express myself in a way that sports didn't.

I think in the world of rock music or whatever it's called - anything outside of Nashville - there's a lot more freedom within that industry to do whatever you want to do.

When you start to analyze [rock 'n' roll], it's only because you don't understand it. You're just not connecting with it once you have to start analyzing it.

It was difficult to get into my friends' rock bands when I was a teenager. They somehow didn't see the need for an accordion player. That's when I realized that I had to find my own path in life.

I believe that what we want to write wants to be written. I believe that as I have an impulse to create, the something I want to create has an impulse to want to be born. My job, then, is to show up on the page and let that something move through me, in a sense, what wants to be written is none of my business.

I often hear people say that they read to escape reality, but I believe that what they’re really doing is reading to find reason for hope, to find strength. While a bad book leaves readers with a sense of hopelessness and despair, a good novel, through stories of values realized, of wrongs righted, can bring to readers a connection to the wonder of life. A good novel shows how life can and ought to be lived. It not only entertains but energizes and uplifts readers.

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art. When you read some books they are fantastic, the writer touches something in you that you know you would not have brought out of yourself. He makes you discover something interesting in your life. If you are living like an animal, what is the point of living? What makes daily life interesting is that we try to transform it to something that is close to art.

I always wrote like rock 'n' roll. And I always listen to rock 'n' roll as poetry.

I am a director because I believe in my own impulses and my own point of view, and that belief encourages me to tell stories that will move, provoke, and change people. But I became a director because I wanted to be a part of the world.

To be an artist is to believe in life.

You can't kill Rock 'n' Roll. It's here to stay

I am a ham. I've no business being rock 'n' roll. I've said it over and over again that I'm a classical composer, dishevelling my personality by dabbling in rock 'n' roll.

I once asked [John] Lennon what he thought of what I do. He said 'it's great, but its just rock and roll with lipstick on'.

I happen to believe the world will change only when we change ourselves. And that starts with finding ourselves: learning to quiet the clamor in our minds and the voices of everyone around us and move toward what feels right – toward the things we know, for reasons we can’t explain, that we’re mean to do, the things that makes us feel alive.

Music is my life. It's inseparable from anything else that I do.

I would like to continue acting. I tell people I can't go back to real life. I have to see how far I can go with it. I am serious about it, and I believe that it's my calling. I think it's what my life's path is. It's what God has given me. It's what I was born to do. And so I must do it.

What are you gonna fill your life up with when you don't have that ultimate satisfaction or peace in your life? You try to fill it up with wealth, pleasure, honor, power, sex, drugs and Rock and Roll to try to feel good.

The world is full of bands and bullshit, and if I'm doing a stupid art project like rock 'n' roll then I want to spare my audience as much as possible.

The brick of my life is music, but the mortar is faith.

It's basically against the whole idea of what always made rock&roll music interesting to me. I thought it was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expressions of rebellion. It was one channel you could take without havin' to kiss ass, you know? And right now it just seems like they're on a big daisy chain, each kissin' each other's asses.

The best advice I can give you is to ask yourself what do you want, then ask 'what is true' - and then ask yourself 'what should be done about it.' I believe that if you do this you will move much faster towards what you want to get out of life than if you don't!

The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.

I am one of the last of a small tribe of troubadours, who still believe that life is a beautiful and exciting journey with a purpose and grace which are well worth singing about.