David Geffen

[On his donation of $100 million to UCLA in 2012 adding to the $200 million he donated in 2002] The cost of a world-class medical education should not deter our future innovators, doctors and scientists from the path they hope to pursue. We need the students at this world-class institution to be driven by determination and the desire to do their best work and not by the fear of crushing debt. I hope in doing this that others will be inspired to do the same.

I’m not Sammy Glick. I’ve never killed anyone. I don’t have to. I’m too talented.

Is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton?

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

[On being partners with Laura Nyro in Tuna Fish Music (Laura’s favorite food was Tuna Fish)] We became partners in this new publishing company.

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.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

I’m a big fan of music, a student. I just wanna learn and keep enhancing my education about Jazz.

I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say anything sarcastic.

The Blues contain so much joy and sadness at the same time.

Being a Jazz musician is not a rose garden!

I had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn’t scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn’t mine – it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.

You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away and it takes away from the imagination.

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I’ll keep playing until I feel like I can’t.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

I went through a lot of mental pains and anguish about choosing between jazz and classical. I realized that where I functioned was where I should be, and where I functioned was in jazz, so that was it.