Best 150 quotes of Martin Scorsese on MyQuotes

[Action's] a Western thing. We think of the hero going into battle, rebelling against a government or an oppressor, but [in KUNDUN] action is nonaction or what appears to be nonaction. That's a hard concept for Western audiences. . . . We wanted to show a kind of moral action, a spiritual action, an emotional action. Some people will pick up on it; some won't.

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.

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.

All I can do is try to do the best work I can. I need to work, I like to work... although I complain about it, but I do like it - and I just need to make the best film I can.

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

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

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. In one sense, it's about protecting yourself; in another sense, it's about always being open to surprise, even from the set, because there may be some detail that you hadn't noticed. I think this is crucial. There are many pictures that seem good in so many ways except one: They lack a sense of surprise, they've never left the page.

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.

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.

And so you try your best. Sometimes you go in with one thing, with one desire and come out with something else. In the case of 'The Aviator' it was to create a Hollywood spectacle, but by about the second or third week of shooting you just want to literally survive it. Because don't forget, I also go through the editing process too, and when the film is released I have to talk about it. So, I take all of that very seriously.

An interviewer once asked me to discuss my collaboration with Elmer Bernstein, and precisely why I chose to work with him. My first thought was: How could I not work with Elmer, when I had the chance? Simply put, he's the best there is-the very best.

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.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

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.

Because of the movies I make, people get nervous. They think of me as difficult and angry. I am difficult and angry, but they don't expect a sense of humor. And the only thing that gets me through is a sense of humor.

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.

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

[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.

DAYS THAT I'LL REMEMBER is a lovingly assembled and beautifully written collection of conversations, observations, and memories of music, friendship, and days gone by. It's good to be back again with John Lennon, his beloved Yoko Ono, and his trusted chronicler and friend Jonathan Cott.

During Prohibition, Atlantic City created the idea of the speakeasy, which turned into nightclubs and that extraordinary political complexity and corruption coming out of New Jersey at the time. The long hand that they had-and maybe still do-even had to do with presidential elections.

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

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.

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

For me, the key image is the boat coming through the fog at the beginning. It's something I imagined and liked and I guess there are other references in other films I make - the similar type of image. But I think it's interesting, it's breaking through the mystery, or maybe it stays in the fog... we don't really know. Where is he at the beginning of the film, who is he?

Hong Kong cinema is something you can't duplicate anyway.

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

I accept all awards. I like them.

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 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.

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 at the end you're at the beginning.

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.

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

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 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 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.

I don't really see a conflict between the church and the movies, the sacred and the profane...there are major differences, but I could also see great similarities...Both are places for people to come together and share.

I don't think there is any difference between fantasy and reality in the way these should be approached in a film. Of course if you live that way you are clinically insane.

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.

I do prefer doing more takes. There's something very organic that comes from the first take, but certain things come out. More details come out, in the way another actor says something. It's always this investigative process. You come further and further to the truth, the more you escalate. I like to do a lot of takes. I have a hunger for it. I like to see what there is to discover in a scene, that hasn't been thought of.

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

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

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.

If Kubrick had lived to see the opening of his final film, he obviously would have been disappointed by the hostile reactions. But I'm sure that in the end he would have taken it with a grain of salt and moved on. That's the lot of all true visionaries, who don't see the use of working in the same vein as everyone else. Artists like Kubrick have minds expansive and dynamic enough to picture the world in motion, to comprehend not just where its been, but where it's going.

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.

I happen to like vampires more than zombies.

If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller , then you just don’t like cinema.

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

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

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.

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