Quotes from Francis Ford Coppola

'The Godfather' changed my life, for better or worse. It definitely made me have an older man's film career when I was 29.

The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college.

It takes no imagination to live within your means.

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.'

Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.

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.

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

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

We do things for good reasons that are bad.

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

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.

Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.

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

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 don't go on set with an army of people because the most expensive elements of a movie production are the plane tickets, the hotel rooms, food and gasoline. If you're willing to discover new colleagues in the place that you are, you can save a ton of money.

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

The time a movie is made is unique, not only from the talent that is available but if the public was ready for it.

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.

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.

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

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.

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