David Geffen

When I go to see Iron Man 3, I’m not as enthralled as I was when I saw The Bridge on the River Kwai.

[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.’

It was just inconceivable to me I couldn’t win it all.

[In 1994] I wouldn’t offer $5 million to stop a book about me! It’s absurd. People will do anything for attention.

The bullsh*t is more interesting than the truth.

Steve Jobs didn’t give a shit about money, and I do give a shit about money. I wanted to have a lot of money. I thought it would change my life, which it did, but not in the ways I expected.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

I was born on a plantation, and things weren’t so good. We didn’t have any money. I never thought of the word ‘poor’ ’til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you’re not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

I have so much more to go through as a young lady. But oh my God. I feel like I can do anything.

I think every kid needs to get a taste of what it’s like to do that real hard work.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

We can aim to create a culture, where kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents, are their most important role models.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

They say that every child learns from their mother – it’s ingrained from babyhood.

I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don’t make up their minds, someone will do it for them.

On the farm, I had chores. I had a calf. We had a herd of cattle in the pasture. We’d go and get me a calf at a cow auction with Amish people, which I would raise. I gave it a bottle every day, in this cute little coop, like a giant dog coop almost. I’ve always been a big animal person.