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

But once I saw them [Jackson 5 during audition], I rushed out with my video camera to start taping them because I knew that they were something so special, mainly because of the lead singer, nine-year-old Michael Jackson. And it was just so obvious to me that he was a star.

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.

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.

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

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.

The world has to change to fit you. And if you stick to your principles, values and morals long enough, it will.

His [Michael Jackson] behavior was weird, but when you get an artist and a genius, many of the geniuses throughout our whole history were weird. And they did weird things because none of us could understand what was on their mind and why they did what they did.

Every day I watched how a bare metal frame, rolling down the line would come off the other end, a spanking brand new car.

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

What a great idea! Maybe, I could do the same thing with my music. Create a place where a kid off the street could walk in one door, an unknown, go through a process, and come out another door, a star.

I’m a songwriter, that’s what I love.

Don’t judge yourself by others’ standards…have your own. And don’t get caught up into the trap of changing yourself to fit the world.

Today’s business climate is not for me.

I’ve discovered that Motown and Broadway have a lot in common – a family of wonderfully talented, passionate, hardworking young people, fiercely competitive but also full of love and appreciation for the work, for each other and for the people in the audience.

Now everybody’s paying higher premiums and more deductibles that’s coming out of working people’s pockets and that’s one of the reasons that his legacy has been refuted.

A person’s shadow stood for his legacy, his impact on the world. Some people cast hardly any shadow at all. Some cast long, deep shadows that endured for centuries.

All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy.

In my view the tablet and the PC are different. You can do things with the tablet if you are not encumbered by the legacy of the PC.

This is a guy who they would have secret meetings about to change the rules. So, that’s going to be my legacy: the most dominant player ever.

The biggest thing that will define my legacy is how I’ve done it, and what I’ve done, and who I am. I’m a weird big guy. Doing rapping, doing movies.

I think about my sons and the legacy I have to leave for them – and it always brings me back to reality.

They’re not concerned with it. They don’t take their musical legacy seriously.