Wise words from Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola (April 7, 1939–) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is considered one of the greatest directors of all time, having received five Academy Awards and six Golden Globes. Patton, The Godfather series, Apocalypse Now, The Cotton Club, Peggy Sue Got Married, and The Rainmaker are some of his most celebrated films.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Francis Ford Coppola.

“My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something.”

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

“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?”

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

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

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

“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.”

“I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be underambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!”

“You ought to love what you're doing because, especially in a movie, over time you really will start to hate it.”

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

“But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?”

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

“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.”

“I believe that filmmaking - as, probably, is everything - is a game you should play with all your cards, and all your dice, and whatever else you've got. So, each time I make a movie, I give it everything I have. I think everyone should, and I think everyone should do everything they do that way.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“If you're a person who says yes most of the time, you'll find yourself in the hotel business and the restaurant business.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

Copyright © Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo