Top 120 Francis Ford Coppola Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

102. “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

103. “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.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

104. “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

105. “I’m very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

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

— Francis Ford Coppola

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

— Francis Ford Coppola

108. “I was terrible at maths, but I could grasp science, and I used to love to read about the lives of the scientists. I wanted to be a scientist or an inventor.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

109. “I still think Ned Beatty should’ve played Don Corleone.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

110. “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.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

111. “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

112. “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

113. “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

114. “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

115. “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

116. “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.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

117. “I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

118. “I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better time, consciousness and the dreamlike basis of reality.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

119. “The internet in hotels should be free – and I really resent it when they charge you five dollars for a bottle of water beside your bed.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

120. “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.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

121. “Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

122. “I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

123. “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.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

124. “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.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

125. “I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It’s astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

126. “All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It’s usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

127. “The time a movie is made is unique, not only from the talent that is available but if the public was ready for it.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

128. “As long as I can make lots of money in other businesses, I’ll continue to subsidize my own work.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

129. “Being a former theater student, of course, there is a part of me that is fascinated with stage crafts and what you can do with illusions and working within the confines of the studio.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

130. “That’s part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you’re trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

131. “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

132. “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

133. “I realized I probably wouldn’t make another film that cuts through commercial and creative things like ‘Godfather’ or ‘Apocalypse.’”

— Francis Ford Coppola

134. “Most filmmakers can’t afford to try something out that doesn’t work.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

135. “I know that if a film is ready to emerge out of what I write, I’ll be able to go off and make it without asking anyone’s permission.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

136. “I was never sloppy with other people’s money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be.”

— Francis Ford Coppola

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

— Francis Ford Coppola

138. “I loved it; I was living a dream.”

— Francis Ford Coppola