Quotes from Francis Ford Coppola

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful.

When I do a novel, I don't really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.

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

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 liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.

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

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.

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

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.

My big goal in life was always to figure out how I can make a lot of money so I can go off and make films irrespective of the opinion of the three or four critics who seem to rule the roost.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.