Twice in two days, Francis Ford Coppola will utter the same quotation.

“Tolstoy once said that the great surprise of life is when you realise you’re elderly,” the great director says, slowly consuming a very small portion of silken tofu at a fine Japanese restaurant in Tribeca, which is all he’ll allow himself to eat for a midday meal these days. (Actually, it was the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky who said, “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.” But really, who’s quibbling?)

Washington Post