“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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'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.”

“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.”