Martin Scorsese Quotes:- Martin Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an American-Italian filmmaker, actor, and historian, whose career spans more than 50 years.
Scorsese’s body of work addresses such themes as Italian-American identity (most notably Sicilian), Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, faith, machismo, modern crime, and gang conflict. Many of his films are also known for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity.
Inspirational Martin Scorsese Quotes
“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
“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
“My whole life has been movies and religion. That’s it. Nothing else.”-Martin Scorsese
“Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.”-Martin Scorsese
“It’s hard to let new stuff in. And whether that admits a weakness, I don’t know.”-Martin Scorsese
“It’s interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.”-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
“When I’m making a film, I’m the audience.”-Martin Scorsese
“If I’m not complaining, I’m not having a good time, hah hah!”-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
100+ Martin Scorsese Quotes On Success
“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
“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’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
“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
“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
“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
80+ Unforgettable Dialogues From Martin Scorsese
“Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.”-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
“There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.”-Martin Scorsese
“I’m going to be 60, and I’m almost used to myself.”-Martin Scorsese
“I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.”-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
“The fact that food plays such an important part of my films has everything to do with my family.”-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
Best Martin Scorsese Quotes About Movies
“The best I can do is to make a film every two years.”-Martin Scorsese
“I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.”-Martin Scorsese
“Film in the 20th century, it’s the American art form, like jazz.”-Martin Scorsese
“More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down.”-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
“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’m very phobic about flying, but I’m also drawn to it.”-Martin Scorsese
“I was born in 1942, so I was mainly aware of Howard Hughes’ name on RKO Radio Pictures.”-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
Martin Scorsese Quotes About Film And Money
“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
“I think there are 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
“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 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
Best Martin Scorsese Quotes About Love & Life
“I can’t really envision a time when I’m not shooting something.”-Martin Scorsese
“I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.”-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 don’t really see many people… don’t really go anywhere either.”-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
“All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.”-Martin Scorsese
“Some of my films are known for the depiction of violence. I don’t have anything to prove with that anymore.”-Martin Scorsese
Famous Martin Scorsese Quotes And Sayings
“You gotta understand, when moving images first started, people wanted to sound, color, big screen, and depth.”-Martin Scorsese
“As you grow older, you change.”-Martin Scorsese
“I make different films now.”-Martin Scorsese
“I’ve always liked 3D.”-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
“I’ve been to North Africa many times.”-Martin Scorsese
“I mean, music totally comes from your soul.”-Martin Scorsese
“Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.”-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 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
Martin Scorsese Quotes About Cinema
“Hong Kong cinema is something you can’t duplicate anyway.”-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
“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
“There are times when you have to face your enemies, sit down and deal with it.”-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
“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
“If everything moves along and there are no major catastrophes we’re basically headed towards holograms.”-Martin Scorsese
Top Martin Scorsese Quotes Hollywood
“Our world is so glutted with useless information, images, useless images, sounds, all this sort of thing. It’s a cacophony, it’s like 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
“I go through periods, usually when I’m editing and shooting, of seeing only old films.”-Martin Scorsese
“The young people today are the 21st century.”-Martin Scorsese
“Young filmmakers 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
“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, in the end, you’re at the beginning.”-Martin Scorsese
“Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.”-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
“My working-class Italian-American parents didn’t go to school, there were no books in the house.”-Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese Quotes About School
“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
“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
“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
“You’ve got to understand when a collaborator isn’t satisfied anymore.”-Martin Scorsese
“I happen to like vampires more than zombies.”-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
“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
“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
Top 5 Martin Scorsese Quotes
“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 grew up in the Lower East Side.”-Martin Scorsese
“I still dislike phones, yeah!”-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
“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, in 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
