David Geffen

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

I’m not looking to be a personal manager.

Did I have a problem with lying to get the job? None whatsoever.

It’s an idiotic thing that you have to be a college graduate to be an agent.

My mother taught me to love my work. I learned everything about business from her.

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.

I hope the Guggenheim plan will be revived.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

There is only 1 difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

All art inspires me. Life inspires me. The art of life, thus my own art.

I got more publicity for not doing a festival than for doing the festival.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

To this day I’m really not sure if I was playing Ziggy [Stardust] or if Ziggy was exaggerated aspects of my own personality. A fair amount of psychological baggage was undoubtedly coming out through the character. Because I felt awkward and nervous and inadequate with myself, it felt easier to be somebody else.

There’s no collection that has a better representation of post-war American art than David Geffen’s.

I believe that all creative people have more than one passion, more than one creative talent.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

Truth exists in art.

If you believe in your art and you love what you do, that energy will go out and people will respond.

Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it’s right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of…recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it.

Art is self expression. If you are expressing someone else’s personality, that is not art.