Michael Jackson quotes - page 8
Do not judge a person, Do not pass a judgement on anyone unless you've talked to them one-on-one. I don't care what the story is...
OK, number one. There, as I know of, there is no such thing as skin bleaching... I have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin, it's something that I cannot help, OK? But, when people make up stories that I don't want to be who I am, it hurts me. It's a problem for me, I can't control it.
..
Yeah, I think James Brown is a genius you know, when he's with the Famous Flames, unbelievable. I used to watch him on television and I used to get angry at the cameraman because whenever he would really start to dance they would be on a close-up so I couldn't see his feet. I'd shout "show him show him," so I could watch and learn.
Michael Jackson
...so much joy to the world...and the system, meaning the record companies, totally took advantage of me.
This is very important, what we're fighting for, because I'm tired, I'm really REALLY tired of manipulation.
I'm tired of the how the press is manipulating everything that's been happening to this situation.
They do not tell the truth, they lie. They manipulate, they manipulate our history books.
The history books are not true: it's a lie. The history books are lying. You need to know that, you must know that.
All the forms of popular music: from jazz to hip-hop to be-bop to .. to SOUL.
To um, uh, dances, from the cake-walk. to the jitter-bug, to the Charleston, to uh, breakdancing.
All of these are forms of black dancing.
Michael Jackson
I would go on YouTube and obsessively watch videos of the best performers: Michael Jackson, Usher, Chris Brown, Justin Timberlake, all those guys. And I would study everything: their moves, their facial expressions, the way they carry themselves onstage, everything. There's always so much to learn. Take Michael- he has so much power, and not just in the way he moves, either. I've always felt like his facial expressions are everything. I was watching a Michael video, and I put a piece of paper over his body so just his head was visible, and he was still killing it. Even just with his face, he was able to connect with the audience a hundred percent. Amazing. I was taking mental notes that whole time, and I still work on that.
Michael Jackson
We stand up and the judge leaves, and Michael turns to me and says, "Bob, the jury system is much older than 200 years, isn't it?" I said, 'Well, yeah, it goes back to the Greeks." He says, "Oh yeah, Socrates had a jury trial, didn't he?" I said, "Yeah, well, you know how it turned out for him." Michael says, "Yeah, he had to drink the hemlock." That's just one little tidbit. We talked about psychology, Freud and Jung, Hawthorne, sociology, black history and sociology dealing with race issues. But he was very well read in the classics of psychology and history and literature.
Michael Jackson
When we first met, around 1988, I was struck by the combination of charisma and woundedness that surrounded Michael. He would be swarmed by crowds at an airport, perform an exhausting show for three hours, and then sit backstage afterward, as we did one night in Bucharest, drinking bottled water, glancing over some Sufi poetry as I walked into the room, and wanting to meditate.
That person, whom I considered (at the risk of ridicule) very pure, still survived -- he was reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore when we talked the last time, two weeks ago. Michael exemplified the paradox of many famous performers, being essentially shy, an introvert who would come to my house and spend most of the evening sitting by himself in a corner with his small children.
Michael Jackson