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.

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 have always credited the writer of the original material above the title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I felt that I didn't have the right to Francis Coppola's anything unless I had written the story and the screenplay.

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 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.

The great hope is that people who wouldn't normally make films will be making them. Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father's camera and for once the so called professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever - and it will really become an art form.

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.