David Geffen

[On his first job in the mailroom of William Morris a casting agency] It was the first time in the my life that I thought ‘I can do that.’

[On Laura Nyro] I said to Laura ‘You know Laura, I think we should sell your music publishing company. I think right now is the right time you have three songs in the top ten this may never happen again and I think we can get a lot of money for it.’ And I made a deal with Clive Davis to sell Tuna Fish Music for $4 million. And that was a hell of a lot of money in 1969. It made her famous, it made her rich. It got people to listen to her music with her singing.

While several parties have expressed interest in buying the company, I’m not shopping it, I haven’t sold it and I’m not about to sell it.

I think everybody thought I was crazy that I quit my job and started a management company in which I was managing one client – Laura Nyro.

What is the one thing that I could do to help you?

Oh please. A Gay Mafia? This is so crazy. This is insane. I think he needs a psychiatrist. It’s so paranoid, and so crazy, and so irresponsible, and makes him look like such a nut. It’s beyond crazy. On a scale of 1 to 10 crazy, it’s 11… He’s made a fool of himself, and he’s made a huge failure of his life. To say you’ve been brought down by the Gay Mafia and its allies is as crazy as anything I’ve ever heard in my life… Did I mention his extraordinary homophobia?

I don’t have a recollection of mostly anybody I’ve hung out with.

There’s so much of this beautiful planet that is still actually spectacular and stimulating. There are so many amazing people that you meet along the way. By using my career as the wind in the sails of my adventures, I could see so many things and so many people that I might have missed had my career gone a different direction.

(On his feud with rapper Ja Rule) Right now he’s desperate. He should be talking about me, not Eminem and (Dr. Dre) and everybody else. He’ll lose, he knows that. The route that he has to take is the “I’m a mad gangsta” hardcore route, and ain’t nobody gonna believe him.

George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin this year. Amal is a human rights lawyer who worked on the Enron case, was an adviser to Kofi Annan regarding Syria, and was selected to a three-person U.N. commission investigating rules of war violations in the Gaza Strip. So tonight, her husband is getting a lifetime achievement award.

I watch my contemporaries, and they love to live in the studio and I don’t. I have a life. I treat it as a 9-to-5. I try to create something new every day, and then I get on with my life.

We were out of work actors who played a lot of video games, so we were sort of surprised that Swingers was seen as cool. I think any cool in it was a geekiness, an awkwardness that most people can relate to.

I just want to make the best music of all time with my best friends.

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It’s like going from nowhere to nowhere.

I love artists who take risks-I think they inspire everybody else about horrible situations that no one wants to discuss.

Entertainment isn’t just based on the very structured syndrome of European popular music, and it’s great that there are so many thousands of people who are of the same opinion.

I never dreamed I would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, mostly because my style is so typically Austrian.

The crime rates among immigrants once [in the United States] are in relatively tiny digits, which is something Donald Trump should frankly understand given that he has ten of them attached to his miniscule wrists.

The only thing that I’m scared of is not livin’ up to the expectations of Dr. Dre and Eminem.

I’m a blowfish. I’m not a shark, I’m a blowfish. So that perfect example about me hitting my head, it’s like a blowfish. I wasn’t coming out of my house going to a paparazzi’s house to attack them. I’m defending my family in front of my own house. I’m defending my name as someone’s screaming something negative at me. That’s a blowfish. People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people.

My vocal style I haven’t tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today.