Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no ‘honour killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give till it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it.

"New York!" he said. "That's not a place, it's a dream."

No human being is only positive or negative. White or black, we all have both sides, the bright and the dark. There are no angels, it's a myth, nobody is a single thing, it's easy to fall into cynicism because wherever you look there are aggressions, war, destruction. I get it, ok? And it's true that for some Imagine [song by John Lennon] will tell you absolutely nothing. And if you have lost your cousin in an attack you would not want to hear it, you would be furious.

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Give me,” says Pogue, “a big city for my vacation. Especially New York. I’m not much fond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globe where I don’t find any.

Maybe the universe doesn’t approve of places like New York.

Some people say, "New York's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." I say that about other places.

If we say that no one's out there And we say we're goin' nowhere And we avoid the question Is this all that it means?

Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me.

[Brazil] needs to forget a little about New York, Manhattan, and think about its slums, its suffering people.

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion, too,
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can.

Imagine what life would be like without imagination! There would be no Michelangelo or Da Vinci, no Edison, no delinquents and no saints, no Mozart, no nuclear power.

It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible.