Motown was about music for all people - white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.

I have this ability to find this hidden talent in people that sometimes even they didn't know they had.

Money had never been the main thing for me. It's the legacy that was important.

Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.

There aren’t enough people who care about the future. They are too busy worrying about today and what they can grab now

Michael Jackson was not an artist who comes along once in a decade, a generation, or a lifetime. He was an artist who comes along only once, period… He raised the bar and then BROKE the bar!

I didn't want to be a big record mogul and all that stuff. I just wanted to write songs and make people laugh.

The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.

Today's business climate is not for me.

I'm a songwriter, that's what I love.

All artists have runners, people that tell them what to do, business managers, lawyers, these - if they get the right ones, they're lucky, and if they get the wrong ones, they're unlucky.

If you become angry with someone today, it is a discharge kashaya (karma effect of anger-pride-deceit-greed). But in that [discharge karma] your intent is for it, which “charges” a [new] karmic seed.

Is not a day divided into twenty-four hours, each hour into sixty minutes, and every minute sub-divided into sixty seconds? Now in 86, 400 seconds many things can be done.

I also drink Scotch. But I'm not picky. I'll take the victory Scotch, or the Scotch of defeat. Or the rotgut swill.

Sometimes, you can hold a grudge for so long you forget why you were holding onto it. And before you know it, half a lifetime has gone by and all you’ve got is a empty fist and a lot of regret.

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.

If you never noticed, it never happened.

You changed my life. You changed my ways. I don't even recognize myself these days. It must be a reflection of you, only you.

Comfort zones are overrated. They make you lazy.

Music is the center of my life.

People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain.