Sean Lennon Quotations

We live in a pretty bleak time. I feel that in the air. Everything is uncertain. Everything feels like its on the precipice of some major transformation, whether we like it or not.

There are only really a few stories to tell in the end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one of those good stories to tell.

I'm trying to use the language of today to express a general existential crisis that I think the world and I are going through.

Being famous is having the power to really implement positive change in the world, and it gives you the power to do what you want. I'm really grateful for it because I can play music and people will listen.

I'm not trying to overcome my father or fill his shoes or reach any kind of level that he did. We're talking about a Mozart of rock music.

The most important thing in my father's life? World peace. Me and my brother. My mom.

I like music because it's the only invisible art form.

I like songs and film because you can turn your life into a sort of myth or dream.

I spend my time trying to figure art out. I was brought up to believe that the way one processes information is by making it into art. That's how I live my life.

I try not to do anything by formula.

I'm lucky that a lot of my friends are in the entertainment industry

Now, music almost feels naked in my mind.

Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it

The work I've done, I'm really feeling the effects of it

I did a record with a producer, and the good producers eat up the budget, so I didn't have any budget left to produce this record. I had to produce it myself.

For me, songwriting is something I have to do ritually. I don't just wait for inspiration; I try to write a little bit every day.

Growing up, I fantasized about being a rock musician and that somehow it would be really easy. I didn't realize that it's so much work.

I feel like I've been way overexposed in the press. I'd rather play shows and represent myself in person.

I feel that film is inevitably the medium of the future. It has been for years, decades, but more so now than ever.

I have a piano and a guitar, and I tend to switch back and forth between those two instruments to help me get inspired.

I like songs that go to different places and then come back.

I like songs that have lots of different parts in them, an intro, an outro and a bridge.

I like to have books around to give me ideas-to get the verbal part of my brain to start working.

There's no single movement out there. It's not like in the '60s, when Revolver came out and that's just it for the next year.

I'm not that in control of myself that I could be specific about exactly the way I'm doing everything as it happens. I'm just trying my best

It's kind of like music from outer space. It's alien music. I've been getting into computers a lot, doing a lot of experimenting and sampling.

It would be nice if I was remembered at all. I don't really care about being remembered. I just want to enjoy my life today and do my best while I'm here. I'm not that ambitious, other than to have a good life now.

If the reviews hurt they're probably right on some level.

The most important thing in art is taste.

The idea of using media for expressing yourself artistically is kind of something I learned from my mother and my father. So for me, I think growing up wanting to be an artist, I always imagined myself sort of crossing over or mixing media and so it was a natural evolution for me to try to express in a filmic way or in a visual way. It just kind of seems like a natural sort of progression for me in terms of what I'm trying to do as an artist.

I don't like when people dress intentionally ugly. Personally that's not my thing.

If you give people more perspective of one object, they start to see it more clearly.

The one thing I do find about serious reviews is that usually they tend to have a point, and that's what I find hurt so much about discerning critics. If the reviews hurt they're probably right on some level.

I actually think in music, learning technical stuff doesn't matter. You can be as technical as you like, but still sound awful.

I'm always surprised that people make such a fuss about Italian tailoring and French design houses. I think traditional British tailoring for men is so good. Everything's the right cut, the fabrics are good.

I wouldn't say the purpose of making art is to enjoy it necessarily. For me, it happens to be the thing I enjoy the most. I don't even know what the purpose of art is really, I just know that is something that makes me feel satisfied in a way that other things don't. That's all I know, that's why I like to write songs and films or draw. I just like to make things and somehow I find it gives me a feeling of satisfaction that I can't find in other areas of my life.

It's a bit embarrassing watching myself, but I couldn't get someone else to play me, that would've been stupid

My tendency is to be very experimental.

You can't just pay attention to the short term, you just have to keep publishing.

When I was 15, a cabdriver asked me if I was Paul McCartney's daughter,

My favourite men's clothes are like Victorian British clothing.

I do think British tailoring is the best. French people hate me when I say that, but I do think it's true.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist

I've always been cool, basically. I was cool in utero.

Making films is great. You've got 100 people around and you're all dressing up and making weird art-it's a fun group activity.

Some people feel that it's controversial if I say that because my dad is known as a political artist. But I don't really believe that he was a political artist. I think some of his songs were political, and I think they were incredible because he was able to make art that was political and that wasn't pedantic. But I think he was unique in being able to do that.

I was always nervous to play my father's [John Lennon's] songs.

Natural gas has been sold as clean energy. But when the gas comes from fracturing bedrock with about five million gallons of toxic water per well, the word “clean” takes on a disturbingly Orwellian tone. Don’t be fooled. Fracking for shale gas is in truth dirty energy.

Anyone who doesn't think the government killed my father either hasn't given the issue much thought, or is insane...

I think when people try to use their art for political views, I think they're art becomes smaller, less interesting. And so for me, as an artist, I'm trying to speak about things in a universal way and not be pedantic or small-minded and try to convince other people of my political views. But having said that, every day I live in sort of complete terror because of what I read in the newspaper and what is going on in the world. I'm constantly, as I think many of us are, overwhelmed by the sort of, mass psychosis that's occurring.

I'm lucky to have had a father [John Lennon] who paid attention.

I wouldn't even say "Imagine" is political. I think it's more just sort of declaration of humanity. I don't find his political songs to be the ones that I go home and listen to. And I would say that of any artist. They're not the ones that interest.

For me, songwriting is something that I have to do ritually. I don't just wait for inspiration; I try to write a little bit every day.

I don't really believe in political art. I feel in my heart the purpose of art transcends cultural and class and politics. I think something like the Sistine Chapel is something that goes beyond just being a Christian thing. It transcends its Christianity and becomes sort of a universal beauty. And I think that's true of music and art and literature.

I have a specific set of, I have a specific sort of negative energies to deal with that might be specific to me, but it definitely something that all artists have to deal with at one point or another. But I think for me, it's just maybe more specific.

Wonder Woman was my first love, and now she’s [Charlotte Kemp Muhl) my last.

What I hate is when you're wearing something and you feel it on your body. I hate that.

My dad, he's definitely one of greatest writers of his generation. There is no question about it. When you are that good, when work is that good, you have to appreciate every aspect of it. It's the architecture of it, it's like looking at a Frank Lloyd Wright building or a Lautner building, it's master craftsmanship. Every aspect of it intertwines in a perfectly harmonious way. That's what architecture is at its best and the architecture of my father's music is on that level.

Now Daddy is part of God. I guess when you die you become much more bigger, because you're part of everything.

They say rock is dead. Andy [Warhol] said art is dead. God is dead according to Nietzsche. If everything's dead what's alive? Only technology. We're in the era of technology.

My father was assassinated by an FBI-CIA connection