David Geffen

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

[To Robertson] I think you should move to California. Malibu is paradise. You can always change your mind. Why don’t you just let me put this together? I’ll get you a house in the Malibu Colony.

My father died in 1960. He was an intellectual. . . . She made the money and he read a lot. He wasn’t successful or ambitious. He spoke lots of languages. There were times that kids said to me, ‘What does your father do?’ and I had to make something up because I actually didn’t know what he did.

[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.’

We all acquire damage as infants and children and we work on removing those scars all of our lives. You won’t heal everything, but what’s important is the work.

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

Don’t find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain.

You must do the things you think you cannot do.

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta give yourself what you wish you were getting from someone else.

Idleness is the reason for many of our troubles.

Stars are good too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed last night I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn’t reach, which astonished me. Then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into thee midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could’ve held out a little longer, maybe I could’ve got one.

Its a choice. You just have to decide that I’m not going to put my energy there. I’m going to decide to let this go. It’s your choice. You can embrace it, you can become a prisoner of bitterness and resentment anger and victim city, or you can just say ‘I’m going to live my life and be happy’.

Pardon me if I haunt you tonight.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

Of all the follies the elder generation falls victim to this is the most foolish, namely, the constant criticism of the younger element who will not be and cannot be like ourselves because we and they are different tribes produced of different elements in the great spirit of Time.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

If you want to change the world, start with the next person who comes to you in need.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

The quickest way from A to B is not always at the most feverish pace.

You are only as happy as your saddest child.