97+ Francis Ford Coppola Quotes On Success, Education And World

Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and is best known for his work on The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation. He won five Academy Awards for his work, including Best Picture for The Godfather Part II. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Francis Ford Coppola on life, leadership, success.

Top 10 Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

1. I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
2. 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?
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.
6. 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.
7. I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.
8. 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.
9. My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something.
10. I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.

Francis Ford Coppola Short Quotes

• Movies are the art form most like man's imagination.
• A director is the ringmaster of a circus that's inventing itself.
• Art depends on luck and talent.
• There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.
• Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.
• Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.
• I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.
• I probably have genius. But no talent.
• I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn't do well in school.
• I still think Ned Beatty should've played Don Corleone.

Francis Ford Coppola Quotes About Life

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 — Francis Ford Coppola

Drinking wine is just a part of life, like eating food. — Francis Ford Coppola

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess. — Francis Ford Coppola

Death is what makes life an event. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola Quotes About Success

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

Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes successful in show business. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

I've been failing for, like, ten or eleven years. When it turns, it'll turn. Right now I'm just trying to squeeze through a very tight financial period, get the movie out, and put my things in order. — Francis Ford Coppola

I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes. — Francis Ford Coppola

I was interested in the idea of succession - showing a father and a son both in their own time and drawing a contrast — Francis Ford Coppola

I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In 'The Godfather' it was succession. In 'The Conversation' it was privacy. In 'Apocalypse' it was morality. — Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola Quotes About World

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola Quotes About Creative

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

Collaboration is like the sex of creativity. — Francis Ford Coppola

There's nothing creative about living within your means. — Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola Quotes About Film

My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. — Francis Ford Coppola

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.' — Francis Ford Coppola

So much of the art of film is to do less. To aspire to do less. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

The very earliest people who made film were magicians. — Francis Ford Coppola

I made this movie for $40,000, which was this little black-and-white horror film called Dementia 13, which we made in about nine days. — Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola Quotes About Kind

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school. — Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola Quotes About Work

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

Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie... There is something we know that's connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth. — Francis Ford Coppola

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

Work on nothing less than epic scale — Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films. I didn't make that money necessarily from the film business, but I eventually made a lot of money and that's what I do. Of course, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate, and I'm pretty content with my life. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

The great hope is that people who wouldn't normally make films will be making them. Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father's camera and for once the so called professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever - and it will really become an art form. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

I was never sloppy with other people's money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be. — Francis Ford Coppola

The essence of cinema is editing. — Francis Ford Coppola

A lot of the young people make beautiful films or big films or are able to finance them, but they can't get anyone to distribute them, they can't get anyone to see them, so they go to these thousands of film festivals. So I still believe that even though a young kid might be able to make a masterpiece or something that changes the direction of cinema, the issue of how to get it to people is still not solved. — Francis Ford Coppola

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet. — Francis Ford Coppola

Today's winemakers still worry about quality. — Francis Ford Coppola

My film isn't about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little we went insane. — Francis Ford Coppola

I remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn't know, and said the theme is 'privacy' and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you're not sure which way to go. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

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

You ought to love what you're doing because, especially in a movie, over time you really will start to hate it. — Francis Ford Coppola

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

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say, "I learned so much today," that shows something about the cinema. Because the cinema is very young. It's only 100 years old. — Francis Ford Coppola

Cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby. — Francis Ford Coppola

In America, even the critics - which is a pity - tend to genre-ize things. They have a hard time when genres get mixed. They want to categorize things. That's why I love Wes Anderson's films and the Coen Brothers, because you don't know what you're going to get, and very often you get something that you don't expect and that's just what a genre's not supposed to do. — Francis Ford Coppola

Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent. — Francis Ford Coppola

Of all the human evils, of which we have thousands of years of record and our own contemporary experiences, the most horrible evil of all is hypocrisy. It's this idea that there are those who do bad and there are those who do good, when, in fact, even the people who supposedly do good are saying they do good to mask the fact that they do evil. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

I remember teachers who really singled me out for their discouragement. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

One of the most important tools that a filmmaker has are his/her notes. — Francis Ford Coppola

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. — Francis Ford Coppola

We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane. — Francis Ford Coppola

But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money? — Francis Ford Coppola

I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better - time, consciousness and the dream-like basis of reality. — Francis Ford Coppola

Life Lessons by Francis Ford Coppola

1. Francis Ford Coppola teaches us to take risks and to never be afraid to fail as he has taken risks throughout his career and has experienced both success and failure.
2. He also encourages us to stay true to our vision and to never compromise our art or our beliefs.
3. Lastly, he teaches us to be resilient and to never give up, no matter how challenging the situation may be.