Top 100 Martin Scorsese Quotes
#1. Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.
Martin Scorsese
#2. I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.
Martin Scorsese
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. You have to put yourself in a situation, a lifestyle, that makes you do the work. Even if it's a monastery.
Martin Scorsese
#7. If everything moves along and there are no major catastrophes we're basically headed towards holograms.
Martin Scorsese
#8. Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.
Martin Scorsese
#9. I don't really see a conflict between the church and the movies, the sacred and the profane ... there are major differences, but I could also see great similarities ... Both are places for people to come together and share.
Martin Scorsese
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. Part of making any endeavour is that each one has its own special problems. It's the nature of the process.
Martin Scorsese
#13. You make a deal. You figure out how much sin you can live with.
Martin Scorsese
#14. In truly great films - the ones that people need to make, the ones that start speaking through them, the ones that keep moving into territory that is more and more unfathomable and uncomfortable - nothing's ever simple or neatly resolved. You're left with a mystery.
Martin Scorsese
#15. 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
#16. I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.
Martin Scorsese
#17. Violence is not the answer, it doesn't work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred ... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.
Martin Scorsese
#18. Hong Kong cinema is something you can't duplicate anyway.
Martin Scorsese
#19. 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
#20. Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions.
Martin Scorsese
#21. I go through periods, usually when I'm editing and shooting, of seeing only old films.
Martin Scorsese
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#28. If I'm not complaining, I'm not having a good time, hah hah!
Martin Scorsese
#29. I don't know how else to tell the story except to utilise that vocabulary: the rain, the darkness, the mansions, the framing, etc, the lighting and that sort of thing.
Martin Scorsese
#30. My films really have to be a part of a whole body of work that says something to me.
Martin Scorsese
#31. 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
#32. Eradicating a religion of kindness is, I think, a terrible thing for the Chinese to attempt.
Martin Scorsese
#33. I'm not a Hollywood director. I'm an in spite of Hollywood director.
Martin Scorsese
#34. 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
#35. I loved the idea of seeing the world through a boy's eyes.
Martin Scorsese
#37. DAYS THAT I'LL REMEMBER is a lovingly assembled and beautifully written collection of conversations, observations, and memories of music, friendship, and days gone by. It's good to be back again with John Lennon, his beloved Yoko Ono, and his trusted chronicler and friend Jonathan Cott.
Martin Scorsese
#38. On every film you suffer, but on some you really suffer.
Martin Scorsese
#40. Zombies, what are you going to do with them? Just keep chopping them up, shooting at them, shooting at them.
Martin Scorsese
#43. 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
#44. 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
#46. The first element that I connected with was the emotion. Sorry, that's how it goes.
Martin Scorsese
#47. 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
#48. My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.
Martin Scorsese
#49. You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.
Martin Scorsese
#50. I didn't realize there are generations who do not know about the origins of film.
Martin Scorsese
#51. It's very good for me to remember what actors go through.
Martin Scorsese
#52. I'm in a different chapter of my life. As time goes by and I grow older, I find that I need to just be quiet and think. There have been periods when I've locked myself away for days, but now it's different - I'm married and we have a daughter who is in my office the whole time.
Martin Scorsese
#53. 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
#54. The only way I was able to defend myself was to be able to take punishment. Then I got a lot of respect. They said, "Oh, he's okay, he can take it. Don't hit him." The guys were pretty big, and I had asthma.
Martin Scorsese
#55. The fact that food plays such an important part in my films has everything to do with my family.
Martin Scorsese
#56. Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.
Martin Scorsese
#57. It's hard to let new stuff in. And whether that admits a weakness, I don't know.
Martin Scorsese
#58. A panoramic vision of Bob Dylan, his music, his shifting place in American culture, from multiple angles. In fact, reading Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America is as thrilling and surprising as listening to a great Dylan song.
Martin Scorsese
#59. Some of my films are known for the depiction of violence. I don't have anything to prove with that any more.
Martin Scorsese
#61. Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out
Martin Scorsese
#62. The only thing I really wanted was the freedom to be able to get what I want on film. I've dealt with the MPAA since 1973, so I know how to renegotiate and rework.
Martin Scorsese
#63. I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually.
Martin Scorsese
#64. More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down.
Martin Scorsese
#66. 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
#67. You've got to understand when a collaborator isn't satisfied anymore.
Martin Scorsese
#68. If you're looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel.
Martin Scorsese
#69. Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.
Martin Scorsese
#71. 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
#73. I'm obsessed with New York. I just find it so remarkable. You really treasure this city when you go to different countries and you see that there is no mix. When you get back to the city, it's such an exciting place.
Martin Scorsese
#74. The storyboard for me is the way to visualise the entire movie in advance,
Martin Scorsese
#76. That subject matter has never left me ... The more you're in the material world, the more there is a tendency for a search for serenity and a need to not be distracted by physical elements that are around you.
Martin Scorsese
#77. 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
#78. On the one hand, you're the same person, but as you get older, you change somewhat, and you never know how it's going to affect your work.
Martin Scorsese
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.
Martin Scorsese
#82. All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.
Martin Scorsese
#83. I was born in 1942, so I was mainly aware of Howard Hughes' name on RKO Radio Pictures.
Martin Scorsese
#84. There are times when you have to face your enemies, sit down and deal with it.
Martin Scorsese
#88. My working-class Italian-American parents didn't go to school, there were no books in the house.
Martin Scorsese
#89. I don't think there is any difference between fantasy and reality in the way these should be approached in a film. Of course if you live that way you are clinically insane.
Martin Scorsese
#91. I've been thrown out of schools and fired from jobs. I don't want to work. I can honestly say I haven't done an honest day's work in my life.
Martin Scorsese
#92. Actually, I was rock climbing on this film at 7 in the morning. It was quite unique! But in any event, the colour of the leaves disturbed me so we had to work on that. On the other hand, I didn't want to drench it in a kind of depressing tone.
Martin Scorsese
#93. Being independent ... is being innovative out of inspiration as well as necessity.
Martin Scorsese
#94. 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
#95. Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.
Martin Scorsese
#96. There is something particularly unique about the films of Hong Sang-soo ... it's got to do with his masterful sense of storytelling ... as the critic Manny Farber once said of Hitchcock's ROPE Hong Sang-soo's pictures unpeel like an orange.
Martin Scorsese
#97. The tone of the picture and the atmosphere was in my head and in my blood in a way once I'd decided to make the picture. I had to find my way through that to choose, select, emphasise certain visual elements and sound.
Martin Scorsese
#98. I always tell the younger filmmakers and students: Do it like the painters used to ... Study they old masters. Enrich your palette. Expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn.
Martin Scorsese
#99. 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
#100. 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
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