I was a pretty shy, lonely kid. I blossomed about age 17, when I went to college.

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 always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me.

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.

Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.

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.