Martin Scorsese Quotes

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

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.

Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting

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.

I love movies - it's my whole life, and that's it.

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

Always stay open to surprise.

I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.

Music and film are inseparable. They always have been and always will be.

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

Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions.

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.

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.

If you’re looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel.

The first element that I connected with was the emotion. Sorry, that's how it goes.

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.

There's a way that the force of disappointment can be alchemized into something that will paradoxically renew you.

Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high?

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

You don't make pictures for Oscars.

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

The most important thing is the script.

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

Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet.

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

You've got to love something enough to kill it.

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

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

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.

The storyboard for me is the way to visualise the entire movie in advance.

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 have a desire to tell stories. And I'm never quite satisfied.

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.

I'm not a Hollywood director. I'm an in spite of Hollywood director.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.'

I tried for about two semesters in a preparatory seminary. But I was about 15 and didn't fully understand what a vocation means.