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

• 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.
• I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.
• 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.
• 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 had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.
• 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.
• I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.
• 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.'
• 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 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.'