Jennifer Egan Quotes

Like every artist that comes out, you want to make a mark; you want to be a household name and you want to be someone that people are going to look back in ten years/fifteen years' time and go, 'I love this guy Olly Murs. He was brilliant back in the day; he was someone I really, really liked.'

I was just thinking of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and how young they were when they died. I would like to be a pop icon who survives. I would like to be a living icon.

I think that Michael Jackson, just as an entertainer, as a figure who embodies the contradictions of black identity and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s, will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human beings that we've ever produced in our tradition.

If you're the Rolling Stones, you can sing 'Start Me Up' for 35 years, and people still cheer.

One day in 1984, at the height of his fame, Michael Jackson made a visit to the White House. President and Nancy Reagan may not have dug his music, but they understood the power Mr. Jackson commanded as a common pop-cultural touchstone for just about everyone else.

Every once in awhile, the world will push up an Elvis Presley or a Beatles. But that's really outside the realm of show business.

Someone like Jay-Z does have a timeless quality, but it's much different than ours. You can look back at something like "At the Hop" by Danny and the Juniors or the music that was on American Bandstand in the 1950s-'60s.

What people don't understand is that my dad isn't up on the contemporary music scene. He's been a legend for decades and he doesn't know what's going on right now, and he doesn't need to.

I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture.

Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers.

I know that Kelly Clarkson is going to continue to have an important career. And I believe it will be a lasting one.

Justin Bieber stole my haircut. And Axl Rose stole my dance!

Much as my Boomer friends will hate me for saying this, Kanye West is the New Dylan. Not only do Kanye's best lyrics match Dylan's prescience, highly inventive word-play and genius for storytelling, his indefatigable cockiness eerily channels Muhammad Ali.

Every decade has its ABBA; that's the proof that pop will always be around.

I would really, really, really like to be a legend like Madonna. Madonna knows what to do next, and when she's performing, the audience is just in awe of her.

There's a whole generation out there who don't know that I was a pop singer in the early days.

I want in 40 years to still be acting and to more than anything have longevity and not just be this huge flash in the pan and then disappear.

When they put me on ESPN and they talk about negative things, or when they put me on TMZ and they talk about negative things, I'm just glad that I'm relevant; to have lasted this long being relevant.

Without Elvis none of us could have made it.

I'm not a pop star.

He will be beginning a brand new chapter in the Michael Jackson legend.

I feel like Elvis. Only alive.

I have the person at home, the person who has his privacy, too. Michael Jackson didn't do the moonwalk in his kitchen.

I feel like my peers now are artists like Madonna and the Stones, Michael Jackson and Prince. These are people who were able to take their careers beyond the normal here-today-gone-tomorrow life span.

Who's more important than Diana Ross?