Quote collection
153 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If you're not allowed to experiment anymore for fear of being considered self-indulgent or pretentious or what have you, then everyone's going to just stick to the rules - there's not going to be any additional ideas."
"Music is a big factor in helping the illusion of the film come to life. The same way music brings back different periods of our lives."
"I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean."
"Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It's for the distributor. The film becomes a brand."
"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."
"I have always credited the writer of the original material above the title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I felt that I didn't have the right to Francis Coppola's anything unless I had written the story and the screenplay."
"The things you get fired for when you’re young are the same things that you get lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old."
"Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent."
"If you're a person who says yes most of the time, you'll find yourself in the hotel business and the restaurant business."
"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."
"My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph."
"I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me."
"Most filmmakers can't afford to try something out that doesn't work."
"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."
"I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories."
"The very earliest people who made film were magicians."
"My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam."
"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.'"
"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."
"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."