David Geffen

What is the one thing that I could do to help you?

[To Robertson] I think you should move to California. Malibu is paradise. You can always change your mind. Why don’t you just let me put this together? I’ll get you a house in the Malibu Colony.

My mother was an entrepreneur… She found being on relief humiliating. She built this business from scratch… In 1951 my mother opened this store…

I thought I’d be a success even back in the mailroom at William Morris. It was just inconceivable to me I couldn’t win it all.

We are each a figment of our own imagination.

No one’s asked me. If somebody felt there was a job I could actually do I would consider it — not out of any ambition to be in Washington, but I do want to rise to the occasion of serving there if warranted.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Classic – A book which people praise and don’t read.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it. – Vronksy (Anna Karenina)

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.