David Geffen

I just needed a job. Before being hired as an usher at the CBS Theater, I didn’t even know there was a show business.

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

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

Some people have a greater ability to imagine than others.

I just asked her to support me in this one thing. It’s not a big lie. She should have understood that I was just trying to sell the song to America’s premier songstress.

[On Laura Nyro] Anything she wanted, I wanted to get for her.

We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

I never apologize. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I am.

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.

You can’t change other people or (some) conditions; you can change only your reactions to them.

They’re different kinds of challenges depending upon what phase of life I’m in.

She wears her beauty as the sky wears the stars, infinitely deep and forever shining.

In the end, you’re just a renter anyway. You only own these things for as long as you live. After that, who knows? If I live until I’m 80, I’ll have 30 more years of collecting. If the collection is big enough, I’ll build a museum. And if not, I’ll leave it to a museum.

I only ask to be free, the butterflies are free.

A person should design the way he makes a living around how he wishes to make a life.

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

[on Diana’s Death] I remember just feeling completely numb, disorientated, dizzy.

You are writing your children’s future with your answers.

Awareness without action is worthless.

I don’t believe in geniuses, I believe in hard work.