Francis Ford Coppola

"As long as I can make lots of money in other businesses, I'll continue to subsidize my own work."

"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 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."

"I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories."

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

"I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book."

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

"I'm no longer dependent on the movie business to make a living. So if I want to make movies as other old guys would play golf, I can."

"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."

"It is a little disappointing to see that your legs are not as strong. But I like the idea of growing old, and the thought of approaching death is not particularly daunting to me."

"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."

"The only TV I would be interested in exploring would be live television. There's no substitute for a team of artists performing at their peak live when failure is possible. It's a high-wire act. That excites me."

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

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

"We support each other in the Coppola family. We love the idea of everyone getting his place in the sun."

"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.'"

"When newspapers started to publish the box office scores of movies, I was horrified. Those results are totally fake because they never include the promotion budget."

"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."