On the distinction between a search for knowledge and a need for love, and which is more important:

"You know the answer, we all know the answer. Love is more important. Maybe for the human race... that’s like the double, that’s like half the double because the double says, 'So what if in 2010 there is a nuclear war?', and 'Look, there are 7 billion people on Earth. There are many - too many - people on Earth. If there were 400 million on Earth, the Earth will be a better place. Where, if they had one of those nuclear wars, there will be 30,000 to 400,000 people left, and they will be smart,' and that is what the double is telling him. And the other side of Dominik says, 'I can’t accept that there are good people, children, families, cultures, languages, music; is all going to be lost.' Double says, 'Well, that’s the only way. That’s the way nature does it. The Dinosaurs are gone. Nature doesn’t care about all that.' But he says, 'I don’t accept that.' That discussion, whether or not Darwinian Evolution is more important, he can’t bear to see Veronica grow older and suffer and die. He can go back to the origins of language. That is what he always wanted. So at the end, love is more important because he can’t do that to her."

Coppola on the concepts of time and philosophy in Youth Without Youth:

"It’s not accessible to anybody, you don’t have to wrap your head about it. That is a very Western idea. You have to be inspired by it and maybe some night at 4 in the morning, a week from when you saw it, you think about it and you get it. I made the film more - and all my films now - that I want to make are sort of questions. And the film is the answer. I learned a lot with this movie. I learned that probably the wonderful human consciousness that we all have, it’s hard to describe what it is because it’s not just a little voice in your head saying, 'I’m me! I’m Francis!' It also has emotion, has memory, has all these other aspects. How would you explain your consciousness to someone? I’m interested in that, and I got to the conclusion, when I finished this movie, that I understand more about the fantastic human consciousness. And that comes not only from the complexity of brain and bodies wired up, and all those wires, but the infusion of language. That language was the little flame that enables us to be the way we are. I thought back to when I was 3 or 4 years old, which is my first memory of being me. That was the first time I had a little bit of language, so that it was something of working in this film that built this effort I made."

On whether it's enough to pose questions and get answers, and how the film will be received by mainstream audiences:

"I’m [not] dismayed or worried at all because it’s not the cut-and-dried a movie that we see all the time. But I feel that all we can understand it as much as anybody understands anything. But again, you have to read it a few times. See the movie again. It’s fun to see it a second time because now you know, more or less, what is coming. And when the double appears, you can listen to what they are arguing about. I don’t think you don’t enjoy the film the first time you see it, but I think you can enjoy it the second time. Like Apocalypse Now, when it came out everybody was thinking that it was the weirdest thing on Earth. Then they thought that it was the greatest war film, and the Brando stuff at the end felt apart. And ten years later [many] said the part of Brando was the greatest existential thing. So movies change as time goes by and you see it over again like works of literature."

Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now and how many times its been reinvented within the film world:

"Yes, they make films that are like it, or like Conversation, that was a pretty weird movie, too. So I’m not afraid of weird. I’m not pretentious and I hope you don’t understand it like that, because I didn’t mean to be pretentious because I don’t know the answers. But really, I’m interested - of course at my age I wonder what is my life really up to? What is going to happen when I die? and stuff like every body does. So I was interested in this character because he was sort of my age."