241 Quotes by Francis Ford Coppola

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

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.

I’m very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.

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.

That’s part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you’re trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.

I like to work in the morning. I like to sometimes go to a place where I’m all alone where I’m not going to get a phone call early that hurts my feelings, because once my feelings are hurt, I’m dead in the water.

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.

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. But you look at the project and think, ‘Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.’ I’d like to do something only I can do.