Top 60 Martin Scorsese Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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?

I’m an older generation.

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.

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

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.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.

I happen to like vampires more than zombies.

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

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.

I’ve always liked 3D.

I’m very phobic about flying, but I’m also drawn to it.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

It’s interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.

I don’t like being in houses alone.

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.

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.

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.

Film in the 20th century, it’s the American art form, like jazz.

I mean, music totally comes from your soul.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

You never know how much time you have left.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.

I still dislike phones, yeah!

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

There’s no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

You don’t make pictures for Oscars.

If I’m not complaining, I’m not having a good time, hah hah!

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

I make different films now.

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.

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.