Francis Ford Coppola Quotations

I like to work in the morning. I like to sometimes go to a place where I'm all alone where I'm not going to get a phone call early that hurts my feelings, because once my feelings are hurt, I'm dead in the water.

I realized I probably wouldn't make another film that cuts through commercial and creative things like 'Godfather' or 'Apocalypse.'

If you're a person who says yes most of the time, you'll find yourself in the hotel business and the restaurant business.

The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

I was always the black sheep of the family and always told that I was dumb, and I had a low IQ and did badly in school.

When a movie is about to come out on its initial debut, there are a lot of people involved - the financiers, the studio and the producers and also, many times, the foreign distributors. So it is a time of tremendous pressure and uncertainty.

You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.

Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful.

Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It's for the distributor. The film becomes a brand.

When I was going for my graduate degree, I decided I was going to make a feature film as my thesis. That's what I was famous for-that I had my thesis film be a feature film, which was 'You're a Big Boy Now.'

The most adventurous thing I've done is learn how to fly a helicopter in the Philippines. One night we landed on a beach and slept on it.

Sound is your friend because sound is much cheaper than picture, but it has equal effect on the audience - in some ways, perhaps more effect because it does it in a very indirect way.

The internet in hotels should be free - and I really resent it when they charge you five dollars for a bottle of water beside your bed.

That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.

George Lucas doesn't have the most physical stamina. He was so unhappy making Star Wars that he just vowed he'd never do it again.

I have much to learn from my daughter Sofia. Her minimalism exposes my limitations: I'm too instinctive and operatic, I put too much heart into my work, I get lost sometimes in bizarre things - it's my Italian heritage.

If I have to be remembered for something, I want it remembered that I really liked children and was a good camp counselor.

All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be underambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!

It takes no imagination to live within your means.

I had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.

We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.

Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.

As long as I can make lots of money in other businesses, I'll continue to subsidize my own work.

We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films. I didn't make that money necessarily from the film business, but I eventually made a lot of money and that's what I do. Of course, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate, and I'm pretty content with my life.

My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.

It's ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn't even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again.

We support each other in the Coppola family. We love the idea of everyone getting his place in the sun.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful.

I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.

I believe that filmmaking - as, probably, is everything - is a game you should play with all your cards, and all your dice, and whatever else you've got. So, each time I make a movie, I give it everything I have. I think everyone should, and I think everyone should do everything they do that way.

I remember teachers who really singled me out for their discouragement.

Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.

A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.

By working in the morning, I find a sense of peace; it's isolated peace, but I can definitely be in touch with my feelings, and then I just start.

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer.

I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten.

I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.

I had been a kid that moved so much, I didn't have a lot of friends. Theater really represented camaraderie.

'The Godfather' changed my life, for better or worse. It definitely made me have an older man's film career when I was 29.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.

People feel the worst film I made was 'Jack.' But to this day, when I get checks from old movies I've made, 'Jack' is one of the biggest ones. No one knows that. If people hate the movie, they hate the movie. I just wanted to work with Robin Williams.

My company and people think I'm wacky when I have an idea... I know if I have an idea, no one will want to go through it. But if I persist, people will go through it.

In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales.

When that happens - when risk is taken and the filmmakers dive into the subject matter without a parachute - very often what you get it something with those qualities that make it age well with the public.

The time a movie is made is unique, not only from the talent that is available but if the public was ready for it.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.

Most filmmakers can't afford to try something out that doesn't work.

I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories.

The only TV I would be interested in exploring would be live television. There's no substitute for a team of artists performing at their peak live when failure is possible. It's a high-wire act. That excites me.

I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean.

Everything I do is personal. I have never made a movie that didn't have very strong personal resonance.

'Godfather' was very classical - the way it was shot, the style - the whole driving force of it was more classical, almost Shakespearean.

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

I have more of a vivid imagination than I have talent. I cook up ideas. It's just a characteristic.

I know that if a film is ready to emerge out of what I write, I'll be able to go off and make it without asking anyone's permission.

I've been offered lots of movies. There's always some actor who's doing a project and would like to have me do it. But you look at the project and think, 'Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.' I'd like to do something only I can do.

Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.

Movie-wise, there is nothing I wouldn't do again. It's not possible to make one perfect movie every time.

Ten Days That Shook The World, by Eisenstein, I went to see it, and I was so impressed with this film, so impressed with what cinema could do.

We do things for good reasons that are bad.

When I was 13, I worked for Western Union. When the telegrams came in, I would glue them on the paper and deliver them on my bicycle.

It is a little disappointing to see that your legs are not as strong. But I like the idea of growing old, and the thought of approaching death is not particularly daunting to me.

I had to get a job, and of course, the job was 'The Godfather.' That made me be something I didn't know I was going to be. I became a big-shot director.

I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue.

I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.

I wanted to be a film student again, as a man in my 60s. To go someplace alone and see what you can cook up, with non-existent budgets. I didn't want to be surrounded by comforts and colleagues, which you have when when you're a big time director. I wanted to write personal works.

I've been blessed with enough wealth that I can make a film myself up to a certain budget. So one way I thought I would reinvent myself was just to make these very small, personal films that I've financed myself.

My big goal in life was always to figure out how I can make a lot of money so I can go off and make films irrespective of the opinion of the three or four critics who seem to rule the roost.

Roger Corman exploited all of the young people who worked for him, but he really gave you responsibility and opportunity. So it was kind of a fair deal.

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college.

The whole reason one wants to do lower budget films is because the lower the budget, the bigger the ideas, the bigger the themes, the more interesting the art.

When newspapers started to publish the box office scores of movies, I was horrified. Those results are totally fake because they never include the promotion budget.

You're in a profession in which absolutely everybody is telling you their opinion, which is different. That's one of the reasons George Lucas never directed again.

I don't go on set with an army of people because the most expensive elements of a movie production are the plane tickets, the hotel rooms, food and gasoline. If you're willing to discover new colleagues in the place that you are, you can save a ton of money.

The stuff that I got in trouble for, the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene in Patton, was the stuff that was remembered, and was considered the good work.

I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn't do well in school.

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.

I remember growing up with television, from the time it was just a test pattern, with maybe a little bit of programming once in a while.

I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book.

I was never sloppy with other people's money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be.

I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school.

You ought to love what you're doing because, especially in a movie, over time you really will start to hate it.

Films and hotels have many aspects that are the same. For example, there is always a big vision, an idea.

Frank Capra was a prop man, I think. John Ford was a prop man. It was a little bit of a father and son thing, and you kind of worked your way up.

I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me.

I never went to a psychologist or psychiatrist in my life. Never. You know, Italians are a little prejudiced against that kind of thing.

I was a pretty shy, lonely kid. I blossomed about age 17, when I went to college.

I'm no longer dependent on the movie business to make a living. So if I want to make movies as other old guys would play golf, I can.

Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I'm a sloppy filmmaker.

Some critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.

To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, 'Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.'

I associate my motion picture career more with being unhappy and scared, or being under the gun, than with anything pleasant.