“In a world full of hate, I found that the only thing stronger was the music I refused to stop making.”
— Michael Jackson
Composite from multiple Michael Jackson interviews in the 1990s-2000s, reflecting his consistent message that music was his refuge from public persecution and personal pain.
They called me strange. They called me worse. The tabloids printed lies every week for twenty years. I lost my skin color, my privacy, my reputation, and nearly my freedom. But every time I walked into a studio, none of that existed. The music was the one place where the world could not reach me. And it was the one thing I gave back that the world could not destroy.
“I was a veteran of the stage before I was a teenager, and that childhood I missed is the one I keep searching for.”
— Michael Jackson
From Michael Jackson's interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1993, his first major television interview in fourteen years, where he discussed his childhood and the creation of Neverland Ranch.
By ten, I had performed in more venues than most adults visit in a lifetime. I knew how to read an audience of twenty thousand, but I did not know how to ride a bicycle. I built Neverland because every child deserves a childhood, and I was going to have mine even if I had to build it with my own hands at thirty.
“If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change — start with the man in the mirror.”
— Michael Jackson
Adapted from the lyrics of 'Man in the Mirror' (1988), written by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard. The song became one of Jackson's signature performances and personal philosophies.
I wrote songs about healing the world and saving children and feeding the hungry. People said it was naive. But We Are the World raised sixty-three million dollars. Heal the World Foundation built orphanages. The naive man with the glove did more for charity than most of the serious men who mocked him.
