Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

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

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.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

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 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.

There's nothing creative about living within your means.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

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.

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.

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.

Everyone knows the phenomenon of trying to hold your breath underwater - how at first it's alright and you can handle it, and then as it gets closer and closer to the time when you must breathe, how urgent the need becomes, the lust and the hunger to breathe. And then the panic sets in when you begin to think that you won't be able to breathe - and finally, when you take in air and the anxiety subsides...that's what it's like to be a vampire and need blood.

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.

When you make a film it is like asking yourself a question. When it is finished, you know the answer. Ultimately with all of cinema, we are just trying to learn about ourselves. I have always used the opportunity to make a film to learn more about myself, which I am still doing.

My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something.

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

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

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

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

Although knowledge of structure is helpful, real creativity comes from leaps of faith in which you jump to something illogical. But those leaps form the memorable moments in movies and plays.

Drinking wine is just a part of life, like eating food.

One thing that I'm sure of is the real pleasure of life - it's not being known, it's not having your own jet plane, it's not having a mansion the pleasure is to learn something

It takes no imagination to live within your means.

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

I had been a kid that moved so much, I didn’t have a lot of friends. Theater really represented that kind of camaraderie.

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

A director is the ringmaster of a circus that's inventing itself.

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.

In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer.

Wine is so much more than a beverage. It's a romance, a story, a drama-all of those things that are basically putting on a show.

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.

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.

There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.

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.

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.

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

Sound is your friend because sound is much cheaper than picture, but it has equal effect on the audience - in some ways, perhaps more effect because it does it in a very indirect way.

So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you're comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what's a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite.

Art depends on luck and talent.

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 became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.

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

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.

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

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.

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.

Work on nothing less than epic scale

Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.