"Directors didn't want to work with me because I was 'too controlling.' If it had been a man, it wouldn't have meant a damn thing."

"I'm not an actress, you know. I don't know what's going on. And I'm supposed to be the villain."

"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them."

"I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it - yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don't give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by."

"One of my favorite films is 'Big Fish,' which I think is a masterpiece."

"I don't go on set with an army of people because the most expensive elements of a movie production are the plane tickets, the hotel rooms, food and gasoline. If you're willing to discover new colleagues in the place that you are, you can save a ton of money."

"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."

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

"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 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 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 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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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