Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

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

Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes successful in show business.

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.

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.

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.

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 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!

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

Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie... There is something we know that's connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.

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

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

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

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

I live near San Francisco in the most beautiful spot on earth and enjoy myself in many ways. Yes, I love to work, which for now is to think and read and write, so it's all a dream come true.

The things you get fired for when you’re young are the same things that you get lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.

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

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'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.

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

Death is what makes life an event.

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.

Collaboration is like the sex of creativity.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

Cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby.

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.

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.

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.

It takes no imagination to live within your means.

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 don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

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

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.