David Geffen

I came in early every day for six months till I intercepted the letter from UCLA saying they’d never heard of me. I replaced it with a letter that said I’d graduated.

[To a psychedelic rock sextet call Strawberry Alarm Clock] We’re going to get you six Ed Sullivan shows and we’re going to get you on Janis Joplin’s next tour. [After the meeting on being told by Schiffman ‘David, what are you doing? Six Ed Sullivan shows? Are you kidding? Janis Joplin wouldn’t piss on these people! We are not going to give them any Janis Joplin dates’] If they have another hit, we’ll get them one Ed Sullivan show, and we’ll get them a couple of dates on somebody else’s tour. I don’t care. And if they don’t have another hit, well, f*ck ’em.

I’m not looking to be a personal manager.

If you’re successful, people will talk about you. There’s nothing you can do about it. People make up stories.

Happy is harder than money. Anyone who thinks money will make them happy, doesn’t have money.

I was sleeping on a couch in my brothers apartment, and one day this guy walked over and said ‘How would you like to be in a movie?’ And I said ‘Yeah!’ I was an extra in ‘Explosive Generation’.

A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.

I don’t like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

I’m so naive about finances. Once when my mother mentioned an amount and I realized I didn’t understand, she had to explain: ‘That’s like three Mercedes.’ Then I understood.

We didn’t actually overspend our budget. The allocation simply fell short of our expenditure.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

Money makes your life easier. If you’re lucky to have it, you’re lucky.

The waste of money cures itself, for soon there is no more to waste.

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

If a person gets his attitude towards money straight, it will straighten out almost every other area in his life.

A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.

It’s like when you see all the slave movies. Why you gotta keep reminding us about slavery? Why don’t you show us – put Michael Jordan on a $20 bill.

Most of the artists were trying to make a living, trying to get laid, trying to figure out who they were. They weren’t trying to change the world. That’s what other people put on them. I knew all those people. I knew them all, intimately and well. Bob Dylan. I would say that Bob Dylan is as interested in money as any person I’ve known in my life. That’s just the truth.