“There is no such thing as a reluctant star.”

I went through a long period where I was afraid of doing things I wanted to do, and you get your courage back, which is what’s important.

I have to believe that somebody up there thinks I’ve still got some work to do.

My mother pretty much used to go along with my dad in that she wanted me to get an education so that if this incredible dream I had didn’t work out, I would have something to fall back on.

We [with Andrew Ridgeley] didn’t expect people to take it seriously. But naturally they did, and they thought we were a couple of wankers.

Take back your picture in a frame. Take back your singing in the rain. I just hope you understand sometimes the clothes do not make the man.

This is a very fickle business. It’s really about how much you value the other things in your life. I still value too many other things more than I do fame.

I’m a perfectionist. It’s a big pain in the ass and it takes a lot of my time, but it really is going well and I have to do my own things.

I still believe that music is one of the greatest gifts that God gave to man.

All we have to see is that I don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me.

My dad worked in a very typical first-generation immigrant fashion – 24 hours a day for years.

It’s important to me that I should be free to express myself.

The most common misconception people have had in the past is about my own control and calculation of my career.

Because of the media, the way the world is perceived is as a place where resources and time are running out. We’re taught that you have to grab what you can before it’s gone. It’s almost as if there isn’t time for compassion.

My mother is much more musical, and by the time I started writing songs – by the time I was about 17 – she started to believe in me, musically.

Teacher, there are things that I don’t want to learn.

The whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it’s total crap to pretend it’s not.

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 think I write for reluctant readers. Of course I want everyone to enjoy my books, but if the kids in the back row who normally don’t pick up a book are engaged with what I’m writing, along with the kids who are big readers anyway, then I really feel like I’ve done my job.

One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control–to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic.

For example, Americans seem reluctant to take on Shakespeare because you don’t think you’re very good at it – which is rubbish. You’re missing out here.

The love of fame is a love that even the wisest of men are reluctant to forgo.