Quotes By Francis Ford Coppola

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

We do things for good reasons that are bad.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

It takes no imagination to live within your means.