Disarmament without checks is but a shadow - and a community without law is but a shell.
Michael Jackson is everywhere. I can't not listen to what we did because it's everywhere. I listen to it all the time whether I want to or not.
What happened was I was a songwriter on Quincy Jones' publishing company, Qwest, for two and a half years before I gave him the song for Michael Jackson. He had a meeting with the songwriters. I think there were about six of us on the West Coast and we all had a meeting at his house where he sort of gave us an outline of what he wanted. To finish this BAD album Jones needed one more song to round out the album. I took notes and then I then took my notes to my writing partner Glen Ballard.
Whenever you were in Michael's Jackson presence, I mean, he's the King of Pop and the most recognized face on the planet second only to Muhammad Ali. I was often surprised to find out that he felt he had as much to learn from you as you did from him. So he treated you accordingly. Everyone was a teacher to him. He had something to learn from everybody. If he appreciated your creative artistry, he was that much more into you.
I cherish that time we had together with Michael Jackson. It just makes me smile. It makes me happy and sad at the same time. Just sad because I'll never repeat it, but happy that I got to experience it in the first place.
Michael Jackson really turns my life and changed my creative process as well. "Keep On Loving You" really honors him and honors my relationship with him so much so that the family, the estate and Sony Music gave me permission to use footage from our time on tour together in my new video. I am just so, so honored that they sought to do that because they didn't have to do that at all. It's a brilliant gesture because they realized how much he meant to me. When you hear the song and watch the video, you'll get that too.
Michael Jackson is an underappreciated songwriter and an underappreciated singer. I think the world only gives him the most recognition for his dancing. He was an awesome singer and an amazing songwriter.
Morning comes every day; the sunrise does not fail, nor the sunset. Give it time. That is all that may be required. Just give it time. Do not try to push the river. The cycles of life present themselves, play themselves out, and make smooth every passage and terrain. Try not to get caught up in your story of the moment. Look, rather, to the Long Story. Therein will be found your peace. The cycles will redeem this moment, if you let them, and even this shall pass.
. . . we ought even to hold as a fixed principle that what I see white I believe to be black, if the superior authorities define it to be so.
The amount of information, the amount of incoming that any administration has to deal with today and respond to much more rapidly than ever before, that makes it different.
The stories tend to be what I work on when I'm stuck. Something will just pop into my head and I'll think that's more of a story.