Best 137 quotes of Francis Ford Coppola on MyQuotes

I made this movie for $40,000, which was this little black-and-white horror film called Dementia 13, which we made in about nine days.

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.

I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.

In America, even the critics - which is a pity - tend to genre-ize things. They have a hard time when genres get mixed. They want to categorize things. That's why I love Wes Anderson's films and the Coen Brothers, because you don't know what you're going to get, and very often you get something that you don't expect and that's just what a genre's not supposed to do.

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.

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

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 remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn't know, and said the theme is 'privacy' and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you're not sure which way to go.

I still think Ned Beatty should've played Don Corleone.

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

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 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.

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.

It was the man's dream, and his inspiring attempt to make them come true that remain important.

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'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.

I've been failing for, like, ten or eleven years. When it turns, it'll turn. Right now I'm just trying to squeeze through a very tight financial period, get the movie out, and put my things in order.

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.

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

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

I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better - time, consciousness and the dream-like basis of reality.

I was interested in the idea of succession - showing a father and a son both in their own time and drawing a contrast

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

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

I was terrible at maths, but I could grasp science, and I used to love to read about the lives of the scientists. I wanted to be a scientist or an inventor.

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

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.

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.

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

Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.

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

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.

Movies are the art form most like man's imagination.

Music is a big factor in helping the illusion of the film come to life. The same way music brings back different periods of our lives.

My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph.

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

My film isn't about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little we went insane.

My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something.

Of all the human evils, of which we have thousands of years of record and our own contemporary experiences, the most horrible evil of all is hypocrisy. It's this idea that there are those who do bad and there are those who do good, when, in fact, even the people who supposedly do good are saying they do good to mask the fact that they do evil.

One of the most important tools that a filmmaker has are his/her notes.

One thing that I'm sure of is the real pleasure of life - it's not being known, it's not having your own jet plane, it's not having a mansion the pleasure is to learn something

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.

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.

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

So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you're comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what's a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite.

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

So much of the art of film is to do less. To aspire to do less.

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.