Martin Scorsese Quotes & Sayings (Page 6)

“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.”

“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 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, at 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I think all of us, under certain circumstances, could be capable of some very despicable acts. And that's why, over the years, in my movies I've had characters who didn't care what people thought about them. We try to be as true to them as possible and maybe see part of ourselves in there that we may not like.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”