I love Halloween, trick or treating and decorating...

The overall physical demand that Iraq has is pretty amazing. It's 130 degrees, and the soldiers are carrying about 100 pounds of extra gear. It's a pretty rigorous schedule and routine for them.

The people who are competing business-wise out there want what other successful labels and artists have. I don't want what they have I want my own path, my own sound, my own identity. Record labels care nothing about identity or artistic freedom, they want good business.

Everything that's cool that happens, I look at my wife and I say, 'We need to enjoy this moment right here! This is really special!'

With the song 'This Christmas' I wanted to do something that was kind of different. I mean, Donny Hathaway is an amazing artist. So I wanted to bring my flavor to the song so when people over the age of 45 or 50 hear it they'll be like 'OK, he did his thing with that record.' It's like I can appeal to everybody and not just a younger demographic.

My mother was a professional sick person she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It's just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she's the daughter of alcoholics who'd leave her alone at Christmas time.

'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.

Christmas lights may be the loneliest thing for me, especially if you mix them up with reindeers and sleighs. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel I do not belong.

Always expect the unexpected. Right around Thanksgiving, when the new Alex Cross will be out. It's called Four Blind Mice and it's a pretty amazing story about several murders inside the military.

I am so excited this year getting to play the 85th Anniversary Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Everyone knows on Thanksgiving morning to get up, turn on the TV and watch the parade, so to be an actual participant is going to be fun and I'm looking forward to it. I am gonna have to put on my deer hunting gear, though, to stay warm!

There is no racial or ethnic involvement in Thanksgiving, and people who may be very distant from the Christian system can see the beauty and the positive spirit that comes from the holiday.

Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song.