Songwriting is a very frustrating art form. You have to get on tape exactly what’s playing inside your head.
What we need to learn from children isn’t childish. Being with them connects us to the deep wisdom of life, which is everpresent and only asks to be lived. Now, when the world is so confused and its problems so complicated, I feel we need our children more than ever. Their natural wisdom points the way to solutions that lie, waitingto be recognized, within our own hearts.
If you don’t believe in yourself, who will?
The bigger the star, the bigger the target.
There is strength in isolation, there’s strength in being obsessive about something.
Love is a funny thing to describe. It’s so easy to feel and yet so slippery to talk about. It’s like a bar of soap in the bathtub – you have it in your hand until you hold on too tight.
A wish is more than a wish, it’s a goal. It’s something your conscious and subconscious can help make reality.
I was twenty-one years old, and I was so rich in some experiences while being poor in moments of true joy.
There’s no point in trying to scare someone if there isn’t something to bring the person back safe and sound from where you’ve taken them.
Just doing as well as you did last time is not good enough. I think of it as the “Try to get what you can” mentality. It doesn’t require you to stretch, to grow. I don’t believe in that.
If you fight and get killed, you’ve gained nothing and lost everything. You’re the loser, and so are the people who love you. That’s what “Beat It” is supposed to get across. To me true bravery is settling differences without a fight and having the wisdom to make that solution possible.
You can’t do your best when you’re doubting yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, who will?
When you give a performance, whether on record or on film, you want to be able to judge what you’ve done, to measure yourself and try to improve. You can’t do that in an untaped or unrecorded performance.
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.
In general record companies never believe a new album will do considerably better than the last one you did. They figure you either got lucky last time or the number you last sold is the size of your audience.
An artist’s imagination is his greatest tool. It can create a mood or feeling that people want to have, as well as transport you to a different place altogether.
Trying to fire your dad is not easy.
When a writer uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he is aware of it or not, putting great faith in humanity.
They chose “beer as soda pop.” Craft brewers are “beer as wine.
I don’t mean to be judgmental – it’s not even a moral issue for me – but I’ve seen drugs destroy too many lives to think they’re anything to fool with.
The greatest education in the world is watching the masters at work. You couldn’t teach a person what I’ve learned just standing and watching. Some musicians – Springsteen and U2, for example – may feel they got their education from the streets. I’m a performer at heart. I got mine from the stage.