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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"Films and hotels have many aspects that are the same. For example, there is always a big vision, an idea."

"Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It's for the distributor. The film becomes a brand."

"I had to get a job, and of course, the job was 'The Godfather.' That made me be something I didn't know I was going to be. I became a big-shot director."

"Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I'm a sloppy filmmaker."

"I realized I probably wouldn't make another film that cuts through commercial and creative things like 'Godfather' or 'Apocalypse.'"

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"My company and people think I'm wacky when I have an idea... I know if I have an idea, no one will want to go through it. But if I persist, people will go through it."

"Sound is your friend because sound is much cheaper than picture, but it has equal effect on the audience - in some ways, perhaps more effect because it does it in a very indirect way."

"My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph."

"I was always the black sheep of the family and always told that I was dumb, and I had a low IQ and did badly in school."

"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!"

"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."

"The most adventurous thing I've done is learn how to fly a helicopter in the Philippines. One night we landed on a beach and slept on it."

"I like simplicity; I don't need luxury."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have."

"When a movie is about to come out on its initial debut, there are a lot of people involved - the financiers, the studio and the producers and also, many times, the foreign distributors. So it is a time of tremendous pressure and uncertainty."

"Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful."

"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 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'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."

"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."