Top 77 Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

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

I like simplicity; I don’t need luxury.

The internet in hotels should be free – and I really resent it when they charge you five dollars for a bottle of water beside your bed.

The whole reason one wants to do lower budget films is because the lower the budget, the bigger the ideas, the bigger the themes, the more interesting the art.

I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn’t do well in school.

I remember teachers who really singled me out for their discouragement.

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.

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.

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 just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It’s astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.

I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.

Art depends on luck and talent.

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 think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

You’re in a profession in which absolutely everybody is telling you their opinion, which is different. That’s one of the reasons George Lucas never directed again.

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 always the black sheep of the family and always told that I was dumb, and I had a low IQ and did badly in school.

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.

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!

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.

To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, ‘Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.’

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Being a former theater student, of course, there is a part of me that is fascinated with stage crafts and what you can do with illusions and working within the confines of the studio.

We support each other in the Coppola family. We love the idea of everyone getting his place in the sun.

We do things for good reasons that are bad.

When I was 13, I worked for Western Union. When the telegrams came in, I would glue them on the paper and deliver them on my bicycle.

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.

Movie-wise, there is nothing I wouldn’t do again. It’s not possible to make one perfect movie every time.

The most adventurous thing I’ve done is learn how to fly a helicopter in the Philippines. One night we landed on a beach and slept on it.

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

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.’

You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you’ll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.

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.

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.

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

I probably have genius. But no talent.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I never went to a psychologist or psychiatrist in my life. Never. You know, Italians are a little prejudiced against that kind of thing.

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