Prince didn't want to sound like Michael Jackson. Neither of them wanted to sound like Luther Vandross. They didn't want to sound like David Bowie. They were all different, but brilliant.

I believe in the synergy and sharing platforms.

I'm usually writing or producing for other people. I'm like Burger King most of the time; I let people have it their way like "You want it like this? I'll give it to you like this."

People are getting record deals and they can barely sing. We have these new terms for artists that can dance, but they can't sing.

I just encourage everyone to make real music and it will fuel the engine and the machine. Just make it real and put your heart into it. Don't make it because you heard someone on the radio.

The major labels, they roll with whatever is making money. I don't know if R&B turned into making banjo music and it sounded like blue grass, they'll buy it if it's selling.

I think when the music and the product is amazing, people buy it.

If you're going to be called a musicianship, you have to be able to play.

I want to make music that I know that ten years from now, you can put it on and say "This is a great record".

The one thing I always loved about Michael Jackson: he had fun records, but he's also going to make some important statement with the music as well. He's not going to forsake the culture.

You can't say that people don't love music anymore because they do. If we say that all the music stopped, if music stops now, the world can't handle that. We need our music.

Negative thoughts have dirty feet

All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child.

You really felt a radical shift in the advance of a poetics that had really been engendered by [Walt] Whitman. This was very exciting. I wanted to work in this environment.

Moving is hard. Staying is easy. Logistically speaking, at least. And this is true whether you're doing or undoing something.

Luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared. Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued.

Be the measure great or small, let it be honest in every part.

'The Jungle Book.' It's one of the best animated films ever. I saw it when I was small at a cinema in Tehran.

To him who knows how to read the legend, it conveys more truth than the chronicle.

As you know, I was one of the original grunters. But Jimmy Connors used to grunt way before I was born. I never knew I was grunting, it was just part of my strokes.

Bill Clinton is a man who thinks international affairs means dating a girl from out of town.