David Geffen

I forgive you for all the times you’ve f**ked me in the past and for all the times you’re going to f**k me in the future.

We all die unhealed

It’s very easy for me to thank everyone for the incredible contribution they’ve made to my life.

[‘Why don’t you manage me’ – Laura Nyro] Eventually I thought do I really believe that she could be one of the biggest stars in the world? Should I give up my career at this point in my life, where I’m doing so well, and put all my marbles in Laura’s [Nyro] basket? And I woke up one morning and I thought if you really believe it – go for it.

I came in early every day for six months till I intercepted the letter from UCLA saying they’d never heard of me. I replaced it with a letter that said I’d graduated.

You have an idea of the way you think it is, and it’s not that way at all, it’s something else.

He who is not busy being born is busy dying.

We tell lies when we are afraid, . . . afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.

I am what I am Are you what you are or What?

Once you discover that you can, then you must.

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

I don’t expect to retire. Every man must work, that’s his natural destiny.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

If you don’t know what it is you want – and I mean specifically – then you won’t even know when you have it.

Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys. Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at Grandma’s house. And a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both. He was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger-side door.

There is nothing so stable as change.

Now I’m a warrior.

Change can come in either of two important ways: Start behaving positively or stop behaving negatively.

It’s so much easier to tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?