Quotes by Francis Coppola

• 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.
• 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.
• Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.
• 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.
• My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.
• 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.
• Ten Days That Shook The World, by Eisenstein, I went to see it, and I was so impressed with this film, so impressed with what cinema could do.
• 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.
• It's ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn't even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again.
• 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.
• They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I'd be sure to have some dough to support my family.
• In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales.
• We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.
• I remember teachers who really singled me out for their discouragement.
• 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.
• When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.
• 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.
• 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.
• Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.
• 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.
• A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.
• Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.
• Art depends on luck and talent.
• 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.
• George Lucas doesn't have the most physical stamina. He was so unhappy making Star Wars that he just vowed he'd never do it again.
• I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me.
• I associate my motion picture career more with being unhappy and scared, or being under the gun, than with anything pleasant.
• I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.
• I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.
• 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.
• I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.
• 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 had been a kid that moved so much, I didn't have a lot of friends. Theater really represented camaraderie.
• I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue.
• I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.
• 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 think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
• I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school.
• I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.