David Geffen

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.

My life is a success – I am a happy man.

I never went to business school. I was just bumbling through a lot of my life. I was like the guy behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz.

My mother taught me to love my work. I learned everything about business from her.

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

[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.

I was so poor growing up, if I wasn’t a boy, I’d have had nothing to play with.

Bankruptcy stared me in the face, but one thought kept me calm; soon I’d be too poor to need an anti-theft alarm.

A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.

It’s money. I remember it from when I was single!

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

Money gives me the creeps and mildly embarrasses me. I get paid too much anyway.

In God we trust; all others must pay cash.

Bankers are just like anybody else, only richer

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

[on money] It cannot buy you happiness. Some independence, yes.

Money often costs too much.

People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.

A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten

Acting used to be how I paid the rent, but I sold a tequila company for a billion f**king dollars. I don’t need money.

If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.