I probably wouldn't be singing if not for Michael Jackson. When I started singing I didn't like my tone until my mom put me on to Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder so listening to the way they used their instrument helped me get more comfortable with my own.

My mom has this great skiing event in Jackson Hole Wyoming every year for a local charity.

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

It was not possible to broadcast any of that because of an agreement between Jackson and the family. Our legal advice was that we could not broadcast it.

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it that the Union was preserved.

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner I think if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

I taped my first series for PBS in 1982 at WJCT-TV in Jacksonville Florida. The show called 'Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pepin ' was about saving time and money in the kitchen - and it was a celebration of simple and unpretentious food.

I'd die if I was Madonna. I'd die. God what a horrible way to live. And Michael Jackson! To be so famous and to feel so isolated. I feel so bad for them. I don't know how it feels and I hope it never happens to me.

When you look at Michael Jackson there's nobody who loves him in that family nobody. If they did they'd tell him he didn't have to do all that in order to be famous. All he has to do is keep doing his music and be himself. Michael's been a little touched for about 20 years but somebody needs to pull him aside and tell him they love him.

We are not interested in cloning the Michael Jordans and the Michael Jacksons of this world. The rich and the famous don't participate in this.

People had this image of the Jacksons as the perfect American family and I destroyed that image. But what people have to understand is writing that book was very healing for me.

At an incredibly divisive point in pop history Donna Summer managed to create an undeniable across-the-board experience of mass pleasure - after 'Bad Girls ' nobody ever tried claiming disco sucked again. It set the template for what Michael Jackson would do a few months later with 'Off The Wall.'

The simplest way to do something cool is the cross-turn. Like in the '80s - Michael Jackson did it. You jump and cross your legs together at the same time and then spin out of it. That's it.

I met Elijah Wood once I met Peter Jackson I met Orlando Bloom and they're all really cool.

With Jackson there was quiet solitude. Just to sit and look at the landscape. An inner quietness. After dinner to sit on the back porch and look at the light. No need for talking. For any kind of communication.

I'm in show business... I want to hang out with Janet Jackson not Jesse Jackson.

For my birthday this year my girlfriends - who knew I'd just inherited my dad's turntable - gave me a carton of albums like 'Blue Kentucky Girl ' by Emmylou Harris and 'Off the Wall ' by Michael Jackson. It's all stuff we grew up with. I mean you can't have a music collection without Prince's 'Purple Rain' - it just can't be done!

My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school. This teacher took an interest in me. In fact he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish.

Janet Jackson is an icon I've been honored to meet her a few times working with her would be amazing.

It was an amazing experience to work with Michael Jackson who is a legend.

It could be fun to sing with Prince or Michael Jackson. Justin Timberlake has an amazing new sound now.