Francis Ford Coppola the Director, biography, facts and quotes

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

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

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

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

"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"

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

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

"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 liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets"

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

"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"

"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"

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

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

"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"

"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 thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories"

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

"I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me"

"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"

"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"

"Art depends on luck and talent"

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

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

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

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

Occup.	Director
From	USA
Spouse	Eleanor Coppola
Born	April 7, 1939 Detroit, Michigan, USA
Age	85 years

Francis Ford Coppola Biography

37 Famous quotes by Francis Ford Coppola