David Geffen

When we first started DreamWorks, I said to Jeffrey, ‘We ought to call this new company the Spielberg Brothers. Anything Steven thinks is important, we want to invest in.

[In 1990 on the president of MCA calling and saying ‘We’re going to make you the biggest offer this company has ever made, and I’m going to send it to you by messenger right now.’] It’s 1990. Send me a fax.

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.

[On school] Not only did I know that I wasn’t one of the smart kids in the class, but so did everyone else.

Do any of us really have a clue? We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Or what word will come up in a conversation that will change our lives. You can be in the shower and scrubbing under your arm and find a lump that wasn’t there yesterday. I’m doing things here and now. Life is evolving. Every day life evolves.

I’ve earned all this money. I’ve worked for it. I didn’t cheat anybody. I didn’t issue junk bonds and put people out of work. I earned it. And I live relatively modestly given my level of success and wealth.

Don’t worry about being famous or making money; the most important thing is being the best. You have to become a master of your craft, and everything else will come.

Democracy is like a tambourine – not everyone can be trusted with it.’

[on her parents] They’re very harsh critics and they’ve often said to me: “That was shit, you were crap’, but this is the first time (after he saw her as “Amy Foster” on Swept from the Sea) my father said to me: ‘I think one day you’ll be a good actress”!

If I have to listen to one more grey faced man with a $2 hair cut explain to me what rape is, I’m going to lose my mind.

We’re all comedy fans in my family. My parents mainly wouldn’t let me watch stuff that was either annoying to them, or just garbage. My dad wouldn’t let us watch ‘The Flintstones’ if he was home, because he said it was a rip-off of ‘The Honeymooners’. But he would let us stay up really late in the summer and watch old ‘Honeymooners’.

It’s the 2016 election, and it’s 2015 right now. So I don’t care until we’re in the same year as the thing that I’m supposed to care about.

Paramount sent them nine-foot-high (theater lobby) cutouts of me. They say, “You don’t have to come home, we’ve got you in every room of the house!”

Congratulations, Congress! 77% disapproval rating! You may be about to become the English language’s most offensive C-word.

[on El Chapo interview] I have a terrible regret.

Left to my own devices, I dress like I’m here to service your aquarium.

I had lots of breaks.

People say that I’m a millionaire, but that’s not true – I only spend millions.

The idea of being in control for the sake of control is not really important to me. If everyone is sharp and doing what they’re doing well, you don’t really need to be in control all the time.

I can’t tell you an answer to that (question on the meaning of life). I can just say live it, be kind, do your best, don’t hurt anybody, and don’t fake orgasms. From a man’s viewpoint, that’s pretty impossible.

It’s sort of a feeling of power onstage. It’s really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have some effect later on. I don’t really think it’s power… it’s the goodness.