David Geffen

In Los Angeles, they don’t want you to fail, they want you to die.

You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! You’re crazy!

Did I have a problem with lying to get the job? None whatsoever.

I believe we’re all in denial about the people we love.

It’s easy in music to tell what’s good. It’s hard to tell what’s bad.

I was sleeping on a couch in my brothers apartment, and one day this guy walked over and said ‘How would you like to be in a movie?’ And I said ‘Yeah!’ I was an extra in ‘Explosive Generation’.

It’s all too easy to miss out on the important moments in life because you’re too busy staring at your phone.

The more predictable the business, the more valuable it is.

The worst of times often create the best opportunities to make good deals.

I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions.

Did I have a problem with lying to get the job? None whatsoever.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

I believe that any stock that is sold should have real value as automobile or bushel of potatoes, and stock market should be run as a vegetable market.

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially – like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization, and then there are people who are very analytic or focused on strategy. Those two types don’t usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp.

If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.

Although Mr. Edison was called ‘The Wizard’ of the electrical world and everyone thought that electricity was the coming thing, he actually encouraged me to go with my second car.

My advice to budding property developers: do it on the cheap and you’ll get a cheap price. Don’t avoid putting in skirting just because it’s hidden by a sofa.

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.