Dave Brubeck

Get out there and improvise and take chances and don’t be a perfectionist.

Jazz stands for freedom.

Jazz stands for freedom.

You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas.

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: make the best quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

[On being partners with Laura Nyro in Tuna Fish Music (Laura’s favorite food was Tuna Fish)] We became partners in this new publishing company.

[on Steve jobs] Our relationship was based almost always on him calling up and asking, ‘Is this a good deal?’ I’m not in his business, and I wasn’t trying to be. I was just a guy who admired him a lot and was flattered he wanted my advice.

I get my design inspiration from Christian Dior and Chanel.

I used to be able to read memo’s upside down… It was like going to the college of the entertainment business.

On Beverly Hills we paid too much. One hundred per cent, we did over-pay. We didn’t do our research properly.

[On Calvin Klein asking him ‘Why don’t you call it Geffen Records?’] People in the record business just don’t do that. They come up with names likes Asylum, Capricorn, or Island. [Calvin Klein said if you put your own name on the door ‘You’ll get laid more.’]

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

We were all young and we were all inventing our careers. I was very close to Jackson, just as I’d been very close to Laura Nyro. With each person I had a unique relationship.

Competition is the lifeblood of industry.

There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.

If the boss stands in the way of men getting what they earn, he is not fit to be boss.

I’ve been making deals all my life.

No company can afford not to move forward. It may be at the top of the heap today but at the bottom of the heap tomorrow, if it doesn’t.