Quotes By Francis Ford Coppola

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

It takes no imagination to live within your means.

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

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

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.

We do things for good reasons that are bad.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 like simplicity; I don't need luxury.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Art depends on luck and talent.

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

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

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.

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.