Martin Scorsese Quotes
American - Director Born: November 17, 1942


Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.
Martin Scorsese

It's interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.
Martin Scorsese

People
want to classify and say, 'OK, this is a gangster film.' 'This is a
Western.' 'This is a... ' You know? It's easy to classify and it makes
people feel comfortable, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't really
matter.
Martin Scorsese

And as I've gotten older, I've had
more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance,
compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.
Martin Scorsese

When
I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created
so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about
opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the
pursuit.
Martin Scorsese

Our world is so glutted with useless
information, images, useless images, sounds, all this sort of thing.
It's a cacophony, it's like a madness I think that's been happening in
the past twenty-five years. And I think anything that can help a person
sit in a room alone and not worry about it is good.
Martin Scorsese

Now
more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other
and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for
doing this.
Martin Scorsese

If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?
Martin Scorsese

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.
Martin Scorsese

The
cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid
and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it,
manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every
inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we
cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.
Martin Scorsese

There
are two kinds of power you have to fight. The first is the money, and
that's just our system. The other is the people close around you,
knowing when to accept their criticism, knowing when to say no.
Martin Scorsese

When I'm making a film, I'm the audience.
Martin Scorsese

One
of the things is that the good intentions of Prohibition, from reading
over the years and from becoming obsessed with the research of gangs in
New York City, seems to have allowed crime figures at the time, like
Luciano, Capone, Torrio and Rothstein, to organize to become more
powerful, which pulled all the way through until the '70s.
Martin Scorsese

I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.
Martin Scorsese

My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.
Martin Scorsese

Part of making any endeavour is that each one has its own special problems. It's the nature of the process.
Martin Scorsese

I
would ask: Given the nature of free-market capitalism - where the rule
is to rise to the top at all costs - is it possible to have a financial
industry hero? And by the way, this is not a pop-culture trend we're
talking about. There aren't many financial heroes in literature, theater
or cinema.
Martin Scorsese

I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
Martin Scorsese

If I'm not complaining, I'm not having a good time, hah hah!
Martin Scorsese

I
always say that I've been in a bad mood for maybe 35 years now. I try
to lighten it up, but that's what comes out when you get me on camera.
Martin Scorsese

Sometimes
when you're heavy into the shooting or editing of a picture, you get to
the point where you don't know if you could ever do it again.
Martin Scorsese

You make a deal. You figure out how much sin you can live with.
Martin Scorsese

I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.
Martin Scorsese

My
father had this mythological sense of the old New York, and he used to
tell me stories about these old gangs, particularly the Forty Thieves in
the Fourth Ward.
Martin Scorsese

If we just sit and exist,
and understand that, I think it will be helpful in a world that seems
like a record that's going faster and faster, we're spinning off the
edge of the universe.
Martin Scorsese

You don't make pictures for Oscars.
Martin Scorsese

There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.
Martin Scorsese

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.
Martin Scorsese

I'm re-energized by being around people who mean a lot to me.
Martin Scorsese

The
most important thing is, how can I move forward towards something that I
can't articulate, that is new in storytelling with moving images and
sound?
Martin Scorsese

Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.
Martin Scorsese

On every film you suffer, but on some you really suffer.
Martin Scorsese

If
it's a modern-day story dealing with certain ethnic groups, I think I
could open up certain scenes for improvisation, while staying within the
structure of the script.
Martin Scorsese

I always wanted to
make a film that had this sort of Chinese-box effect, in which you keep
opening it up and opening it up, and finally at the end you're at the
beginning.
Martin Scorsese

It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.
Martin Scorsese

What
the Dalai Lama had to resolve was whether to stay in Tibet or leave. He
wanted to stay, but staying would have meant the total destruction of
Tibet, because he would have died and that would have ripped the heart
out of his people.
Martin Scorsese

I think all of us, under
certain circumstances, could be capable of some very despicable acts.
And that's why, over the years, in my movies I've had characters who
didn't care what people thought about them. We try to be as true to them
as possible and maybe see part of ourselves in there that we may not
like.
Martin Scorsese

I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.
Martin Scorsese

Hong Kong cinema is something you can't duplicate anyway.
Martin Scorsese

It's hard to let new stuff in. And whether that admits a weakness, I don't know.
Martin Scorsese

I
think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial
support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot
another ten days.
Martin Scorsese

I love the look of planes
and the idea of how a plane flies. The more I learn about it the better I
feel; while I still may not like it, I have a sense of what is really
happening.
Martin Scorsese

You never know how much time you have left.
Martin Scorsese

I still dislike phones, yeah!
Martin Scorsese

I
grew up within Italian-American neighborhoods, everybody was coming
into the house all the time, kids running around, that sort of stuff, so
when I finally got into my own area, so to speak, to make films, I
still carried on.
Martin Scorsese

The term 'giant' is used
too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we
have one of the rare instances where the term fits.
Martin Scorsese

All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.
Martin Scorsese

I loved the idea of seeing the world through a boy's eyes.
Martin Scorsese

Most people have stereo vision, so why belittle that very, very important element of our existence?
Martin Scorsese

People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.
Martin Scorsese

I'm very phobic about flying, but I'm also drawn to it.
Martin Scorsese

I'm going to be 60, and I'm almost used to myself.
Martin Scorsese

Every
year or so, I try to do something; it keeps me refreshed as to what's
going on in front of the lens, and I understand what the actor is going
through.
Martin Scorsese

As you grow older, you change.
Martin Scorsese

I've
seen many, many movies over the years, and there are only a few that
suddenly inspire you so much that you want to continue to make films.
Martin Scorsese

There are times when you have to face your enemies, sit down and deal with it.
Martin Scorsese

Young
film makers should learn how to deal with the money and learn how to
deal with the power structure. Because it is like a battle.
Martin Scorsese

Zombies, what are you going to do with them? Just keep chopping them up, shooting at them, shooting at them.
Martin Scorsese

Can
a film really change anything? I mean, what was the last time? Maybe
the Italian neo-realists, where they became the voice and the heart and
the soul of Italy, a nation that had been destroyed. I don't know.
Martin Scorsese

I was born in 1942, so I was mainly aware of Howard Hughes' name on RKO Radio Pictures.
Martin Scorsese

Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god... I loved his idea of what filmmaking was.
Martin Scorsese

Eradicating a religion of kindness is, I think, a terrible thing for the Chinese to attempt.
Martin Scorsese

I'd
like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another
film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove
that not all Italians are gangsters.
Martin Scorsese

I think
when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or
six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life
you want to say... well, maybe those are the films that should have won
me the Oscar.
Martin Scorsese

Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.
Martin Scorsese

Working
with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and
'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do
before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'
Martin Scorsese

It
did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king
who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on
it from the Gods.
Martin Scorsese

I make different films now.
Martin Scorsese

Very
often I've known people who wouldn't say a word to each other, but
they'd go to see movies together and experience life that way.
Martin Scorsese

You gotta understand, when moving images first started, people wanted sound, color, big screen and depth.
Martin Scorsese

Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.
Martin Scorsese

If everything moves along and there are no major catastrophes we're basically headed towards holograms.
Martin Scorsese

I go through periods, usually when I'm editing and shooting, of seeing only old films.
Martin Scorsese

The fact that food plays such an important part in my films has everything to do with my family.
Martin Scorsese

Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.
Martin Scorsese

The best I can do is to make a film every two years.
Martin Scorsese

As a child I had terrible asthma.
Martin Scorsese

My working-class Italian-American parents didn't go to school, there were no books in the house.
Martin Scorsese

A
lot of what I'm obsessed with is the relationship and the dynamics
between people and the family, particularly brothers and their father.
Martin Scorsese

People
say you should do it this way, someone else suggests that, yes, there's
financing, but maybe you should use this actor. And there are the
threats, at the end - if you don't do it this way, you'll lose your box
office; if you don't do it that way, you'll never get financed again...
35, 40 years of this, you get beat up.
Martin Scorsese

There was always a part of me that wanted to be an old-time director. But I couldn't do that. I'm not a pro.
Martin Scorsese

I happen to like vampires more than zombies.
Martin Scorsese

We
can't keep thinking in a limited way about what cinema is. We still
don't know what cinema is. Maybe cinema could only really apply to the
past or the first 100 years, when people actually went to a theater to
see a film, you see?
Martin Scorsese

I'm sad to see celluloid
go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971.
If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an
acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore.
The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.
Martin Scorsese

More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down.
Martin Scorsese

I
think what happened there was just the budget would be too big to build
these sets because nothing really exists here in New York of that
period; you have to build it all.
Martin Scorsese

I know
there were many good policemen who died doing their duty. Some of the
cops were even friends of ours. But a cop can go both ways.
Martin Scorsese

I
don't agree with everything he did in his life, but we're dealing with
this Howard Hughes, at this point. And also ultimately the flaw in
Howard Hughes, the curse so to speak.
Martin Scorsese

I
certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower
East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I
really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all
around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.
Martin Scorsese

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.
Martin Scorsese

I don't really see many people... don't really go anywhere either.
Martin Scorsese

Some of my films are known for the depiction of violence. I don't have anything to prove with that any more.
Martin Scorsese

I've been to North Africa many times.
Martin Scorsese

I mean, music totally comes from your soul.
Martin Scorsese

I've always liked 3D.
Martin Scorsese

Well,
I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters
I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing.
Martin Scorsese

I'm an older generation.
Martin Scorsese

I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually.
Martin Scorsese

I wish I could do everything in 3D.
Martin Scorsese

I
was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how
to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how
to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I
grew up in tenements.
Martin Scorsese

I didn't realize there are generations who do not know about the origins of film.
Martin Scorsese

The young people today are the 21st century.
Martin Scorsese

I
think all the great studio filmmakers are dead or no longer working. I
don't put myself, my friends, and other contemporary filmmakers in their
category. I just see us doing some work.
Martin Scorsese

The
Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it
was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said
it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London.
Martin Scorsese

Well
the thing is that the New York of 1846 to 1862 was very different from
downtown New York now. Really nothing from that period still exists in
New York.
Martin Scorsese

You've got to understand when a collaborator isn't satisfied anymore.
Martin Scorsese

The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.
Martin Scorsese

Being
a father at a later age is different from when I had my other two
daughters when I was in my 20s and 30s. If you're in your 60s and you're
with the kid every day, you're dealing with the mind of a child, so it
opens up that childishness in you again.
Martin Scorsese

It's very good for me to remember what actors go through.
Martin Scorsese

I don't like being in houses alone.
Martin Scorsese

I
don't think there's a subject matter that can't absorb 3-D; that can't
tolerate the addition of depth as a storytelling technique.
Martin Scorsese

Death comes in a flash, and that's the truth of it, the person's gone in less than 24 frames of film.
Martin Scorsese

I
mean I have a project that I have been wanting to make for quite a
while now; and basically, it's a story of my parents growing up in the
Lower East Side.
Martin Scorsese

I know that I come from
mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York,
specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am.
And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to
make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid
Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.
Martin Scorsese