David Geffen

The concept known as bal tashchit – ‘Do no destroy’ – has a special significance in Jewish tradition…We are constantly being warned in our faith that the capricious, thoughtless, wasteful destruction of the elements and creatures of the earth is wrong…We should remind ourselves daily of our responsibility to all aspects of creation.

We were all young and we were all inventing our careers. I was very close to Jackson, just as I’d been very close to Laura Nyro. With each person I had a unique relationship.

I just needed a job. Before being hired as an usher at the CBS Theater, I didn’t even know there was a show business.

If you really believe it – go for it.

[In 1994] I wouldn’t offer $5 million to stop a book about me! It’s absurd. People will do anything for attention.

I’m not looking to be a personal manager.

In the medical community, you would never deny a diabetic his insulin ever. But for some reasons, when someone needs a serotonin inhibitor, they’re immediately crazy or something. And I don’t know, it’s a very interesting double standard that I often don’t have the ability to talk about but I certainly feel no shame about.

[on depression] This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am on of them. There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.

I want to change the stigma of crazy, of mental health – period.

If you are chronically down, it is a lifelong fight to keep from sinking.

I’ll drink water. Sometimes tomato juice, which I like. Sometimes orange juice, which I like. I’ll drink different things. But the Coke or Pepsi boosts you up a little.

I keep healthy and I’m always very active and always have been so. I don’t really see any signs of aging yet. Music keeps you young.

It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn’t even think. That’s the whole trouble. When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think.

I have a form of Parkinson’s disease, which I don’t like. My legs don’t move when my brain tells them to. It’s very frustrating.

I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.

I got the mumps. They threw me in a crib so I wouldn’t roll out onto the floor. And there’s a big bay window in my house, and that window stayed perfectly still until that train started to chug. At a certain speed, I could reach up and feel the pane, and that glass pane would vibrate. I said, Doggone, there’s got to be a reason for this. So I go to the kindergarten teacher, and she takes me to the science teacher, and the science teacher takes me to the library and reads it off to me — “This is called resonance.” That was the beginning.

My brain and my heart are really important to me, I don’t know why I wouldn’t seek help to have those things be as healthy as my teeth. I go to the dentist. So why wouldn’t I go to a shrink?

We can’t let people down when they can’t get any medical care, when they’re sick and don’t have money to go to a doctor. You help them.

I think it’s important for us to have open conversations about mental health, especially with me being black, because we’ve never had therapists in the black community, we’ve never taken medication. I think it was good that when I had my first complete blackout at age 5, my mom didn’t fully medicate me, because I might not have fully been Ye.

I believe we have to nip Ebola in the bud before it spreads through Africa and to other countries.

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.