Scorsese Quotes

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

I'm a product of older filmmakers I guess, the past where you get to make movies and scenes are what they are. You know if you think about Scorsese back in the day when he was making Taxi Driver, or Coppola or Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet, they're making films where you witness violence in a real way. ~ Antoine Fuqua

It's interesting to help someone find their vocabulary. There would not have been a De Niro without a Scorsese. ~ Jason Patric

In order to get [Mean Streets] made I had to learn how to make a movie," says Scorsese. "I didn't learn how to make a movie in film school. What you learned in film school was to express yourself with pictures and sound. But learning to make a movie is totally different. ~ Peter Biskind

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

I think it's cool when Scorsese will pop up in a movie or something like that. I never want to make a career out of that or anything. I like directing. That's my favorite thing. ~ Jody Hill

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

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

If Martin Scorsese thinks you stink, you stink. ~ John Heard

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

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

The more you see, especially being young, the more you see the past, the more you can draw upon that and the more you can make the present and the future. It's how you process the past and at oftentimes in the picture, there are references to certain imagery from certain pictures, and certain novels. ~ Martin Scorsese

I'm trying not to let the anger and the violence that erupt take over my life. I guess it comes with the growing process, I don't know. A little mellowing. ~ Martin Scorsese

Cinema is a visual language, and you're always looking for visual metaphors for things. You know, if I was writing a play about Howard Hughes, I could have him give a monologue about how he's terrified to touch a doorknob. But on screen, you know, working with Marty Scorsese in 'The Aviator,' that became the series of images that told a story. ~ John Logan

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people. ~ 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

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

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

It's often overlooked. It's labor. That's at the heart of # collaboration . ~ Martin Scorsese

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

I'd love to work with Tarantino, Scorsese, Sofia Coppola - all of them! I love thrillers and action movies. I love good horror films. I watched them so much when I was younger that I find it impossible to get scared. ~ Cara Delevingne

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

[Luchino] Visconti came from the Milanese branch of one of Europe's oldest families, whose roots can be traced back to the early 13th century. He might have appeared as a character in one of his own films about the aristocracy, such as Senso or The Leopard – that's the life he was born into. But at a certain point in the 1930s, his passion for theatre, opera and the cinema set him on a radically different path.

(...)

He has often been referred to as a great political artist, but that's too limiting and frozen a description. His sense of European history was vast and he knew the lives of the rich and powerful first hand – but at a certain point he became drawn to understand the other side of life, that of the poor and powerless. He had a strong sense of the particular manner in which absolutely everyone, from the Sicilian fishermen in his neorealist classic La Terra Trema to the Venetian aristocrats in Senso, was affected by the grand movements of history. ~ Martin Scorsese

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

Michael Jackson was extraordinary, When we worked together on 'Bad,' I was in awe of his absolute mastery of movement on the one hand, and of the music on the other. Every step he took was absolutely precise and fluid at the same time. It was like watching quicksilver in motion. He was wonderful to work with, an absolute professional at all times, and it really goes without saying ... a true artist. It will be a while before I can get used to the idea that he's no longer with us. ~ Martin Scorsese

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

I'm not videotaping my life, but in a way I am trying to put certain things about myself on canvas. ~ Martin Scorsese

Always stay open to surprise. ~ Martin Scorsese

It's so fun to hear the reaction from Martin Scorsese as he sees you nude for the first time. ~ Henry Zebrowski

Martin Scorsese was being given an honorary doctorate, and one of the tutors asked if there was a student film he particularly liked. He mentioned our film. There was a dinner after the final show just for the tutors, but I was smuggled in to meet Scorsese over dessert. ~ Asif Kapadia

You've got to love something enough to kill it. ~ Martin Scorsese

I introduced myself to Scorsese and I said, "If you need someone to do craft services, I'm there." ~ William H. Macy

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

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

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

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 am a filmmaker. That is all I've ever been. You know, Martin Scorsese makes films about the mob. And I make movies about food. ~ Alton Brown

I look for a thematic idea running through my movies and I see that it's the outsider struggling for recognition. I realize that all my life I've been an outsider, and above all, being lonely but never realizing it. ~ 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

I can't help but have my sights set on Scorsese, Cohen Brothers and Spike Jones. ~ Xander Berkeley

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

I've always been drawn to a certain kind of dark aesthetic in cinema and in film, to what's abjected or considered abject. I've been tremendously influenced by noirish cinema whether that's Von Sternberg or Scorsese in the 70s or Lynch, etc. ~ Anton Yelchin

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

Acting's fine if the script's written by Paddy Chayefsky and Martin Scorsese directs it, but unless you have something like that, I don't really enjoy acting. ~ Jeff Garlin

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times. ~ 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

Orson Welles was a force of nature, who just came in and wiped the slate clean. And Citizen Kane is the greatest risk-taking of all time in film. I don't think anything had even seen anything quite like it. The photography was also unlike anything we'd seen. The odd coldness of the filmmaker towards the character reflects his own egomania and power, and yet a powerful empathy for all of them
it's very interesting. It still holds up, and it's still shocking. It takes storytelling and throws it up in the air. ~ Martin Scorsese

I've been extremely lucky to work with Elmer Bernstein, Howard Shore over the years, but I've always imagined films with my own scores, because I don't come from that world or that period of filmmaking. And so how could I make up my own score on a film like this where it isn't necessarily made up of popular music from the radio or the period; it isn't necessarily classical music. But what if it's modern symphonic music? ~ Martin Scorsese

[Martin] Scorsese says one of the great things he loves about it is how Mark can't get the right shot and he's killing people because he can't get the right shot. It's an example of what film-makers are like. ~ Thelma Schoonmaker

The vampire thing always works for some reason. Always works. ~ Martin Scorsese

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

I'm trying to steal from everybody. So yeah, there's cats that I'm personally affiliated with - Carl Franklin, Paul Thomas Anderson - and others that I don't know personally but their work I'm a big admirer of, like Martin Scorsese. But I'm hoping to come up with a language that is mine, that's specific to my take on this material. ~ Don Cheadle

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

There really isn't a dream role, but there's a dream situation where I could work with a director that I idolize. So, the idea of working with David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson or Scorsese or Spielberg or any of the guys I really idolize is a dream for me. ~ Logan Lerman

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

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

The most interesting of the classic movie genres to me are the indigenous ones: the Western, which was born on the Frontier, the Gangster Film, which originated in the East Coast cities, and the Musical, which was spawned by Broadway. They remind me of jazz: they allowed for endless, increasingly complex, sometimes perverse variations. When these variations were played by the masters, they reflected the changing times; they gave you fascinating insights into American culture and the American psyche. ~ Martin Scorsese

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

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

In the the late seventies and early eighties, I played background roles in thirty movies ... Woody Allen movies, Scorsese films, you name it. Whatever was being shot in New York, I was doing stand-in and background work because I wanted to be close to the camera; I wanted to see what was going on. ~ Tobin Bell

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

I would have practically done all my films in 3D. There is something that 3D gives to the picture that takes you into another land and you stay there and it's a good place to be. ( ... ) It's like seeing a moving sculpture of the actor and it's almost like a combination of theater and film combined and it immerses you in the story more. I saw audiences care about the people more. The minute it started people wanted three things: color, sound and depth. You want to recreate life. ~ 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

If I'm going to produce something, it's going to be with somebody I think is special. Once I go beyond a handful of directors, like Scorsese, there are very few I want to work with. ~ Irwin Winkler

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

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

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

'Taxi Driver' is a movie that changed my life and made me a serious actor. Scorsese and De Niro. I give credit for anything that I've ever done as an actor. ~ Michael Biehn

All they needed was a title. Carmack had the idea. It was taken from The Color of Money, the 1986 Martin Scorsese film in which Tom Cruise played a brash young pool hustler. In one scene Cruise saunters into a billiards hall carrying his favorite pool cue in a stealth black case. "What you got in there?" another player asks.
Cruise smiles devilishly, because he knows what fate he is about to spring upon this player, just as, Carmack thought, id had once sprung upon Softdisk and as, with this next game, they might spring upon the world.
"In here?" Cruise replies, flipping open the case. "Doom. ~ David Kushner

As a kid I watched the Academy Awards on television and always wanted one - or several - like one of my favorite directions, John Ford. He won six. On the other hand, Orson Welles, who's on the top of my list, didn't win any. Alfred Hitchcock didn't win any. Howard Hawks didn't win any. ~ Martin Scorsese

[David Lean's] images stay with me forever. But what makes them memorable isn't necessarily their beauty. That's just good photography. It's the emotion behind those images that's meant the most to me over the years. It's the way David Lean can put feeling on film. The way he shows a whole landscape of the spirit. For me, that's the real geography of David Lean country. And that's why, in a David Lean movie, there's no such thing as an empty landscape. ~ Martin Scorsese

Movies touch our hearts and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places, they open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our life time, we need to keep them alive. ~ 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 had a fascination with 3D that goes back to the View-Master. I'd always dreamed of making a film in 3D. It's like a combination of theatre and film. There's something 3D gives to a movie that takes you to another land. Working with RealD creatively was a liberating experience. Thank you RealD for allowing us to make something like Hugo. ~ 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

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

I accept all awards. I like them. ~ Martin Scorsese

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

The problem with anger is that it's so consuming. You've got to take it easy on yourself at a certain point. ~ Martin Scorsese

I find it hard to understand why Scorsese has never called. You know, given the natural menace I bring to the screen. ~ Hugh Grant

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

I'm a De Niro fan. I went eleven years without seeing a movie; the last one before that, February 1980, was De Niro and Scorsese in 'Raging Bull,' and when I went back, it was 'Cape Fear,' with De Niro and Scorsese. I picked up right where I left off at. ~ August Wilson

Could you double-check the envelope? ~ Martin Scorsese

I'm an older generation. ~ 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

There are movies that change the whole way in which films are made, like Klute, where Gordon Willis's photography on the film is so textured, and, they said, too dark. At first this was alarming to people, because they're used to a certain way things are done within the studio system. And the studio is selling a product, so they were wary of people thinking that it's too dark. ~ Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is one of the great filmmakers of all time. ~ Rob Reiner

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

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

I'm not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel. ~ Martin Scorsese

Being independent ... is being innovative out of inspiration as well as necessity. ~ 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

Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions. ~ Martin Scorsese

When I was filming 'The Outsiders,' my idea of success was getting the next Martin Scorsese movie. ~ Rob Lowe

I would love to work with Martin Scorsese. ~ Gael Garcia Bernal

One of the things I've discovered at my age is I must have enchantment. And that was not clear to me in my earlier years. When I look at my favorite films, the Frank Capra - even Scorsese, even 'Goodfellas,' what makes that movie so remarkable is there's enchantment in their world. ~ David O. Russell

Snoop Scorsese, that's my director name. ~ Snoop Dogg