David Geffen

There are so few great talents, it’s always a discovery when you find the one.

I thought Laura’s record was going to be huge… It was not successful it sold something like 20 or 30,000 albums. Laura lacked a certain level of ambition and didn’t really want to do the things that people do to become known. So I thought I’d better get people to record these songs and make them hits so that people will see that she’s a great songwriter.

[On urging Nyro to tell Barbara Streisand that ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ had been personally written for her] It’s not a big lie.

[On Lou Adler] Lou really had a production deal called a label, whereas we had a real label. We had a great many artists, whereas he had very few. Lou also produced most of the stuff that came out on Ode. We were not producers.

I have no talent except for being able to enjoy and recognize it in others.

Asking me to come work here is the dumbest idea you ever had. It has been a waste of a year.

No matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the American public will find it and buy it in large quantity, It’s true, absolutely true.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

People who are capable of and fit for freedom liberate themselves from physical thralldom by substituting mind for muscle.

When you don’t have much money, you worry that they’ll just put you in the ground someplace and your loved ones won’t know where you are.

But to do for the world more than the world does for you, that is Success.

Being home alone at night makes me a bit nervous. If I’m at home alone, I have to sleep on the sofa – I can’t face going to bed. I’m there with the TV on and all the lights on. I’m not very brave about anything in life. In tennis, yes. In everything else, not very.

There are ships sailing to my ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.

And of all the things I look forward to in life, falling in love with you is at the top of the list.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

You cannot be who and what you are unless you have a lifestyle, both internally and externally, that is designed to support that definition of self.

When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean.

One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that your other parent has died.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.