Martin Scorsese quotes
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“I love movies - it's my whole life, and that's it.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“When I was growing up in the mid-'50s, the Roaring Twenties were a huge part of the culture. There were a number of films and a bunch of television shows that dealt with the mythology of the underworld from that period.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“The vampire thing always works for some reason. Always works.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“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.”
-- Martin ScorseseSource : FaceBook post by Martin Scorsese from Sep 15, 2013
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“Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.”
-- Martin ScorseseSource : FaceBook post by Martin Scorsese from Jul 08, 2013
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“When everything is added up, the frequent blows weighted against the sporadic triumphs, this is I have to say not just a vocation, it's a great gift. But you also know this, for your work, for your passion, every day is a rededication. Painters, dancers, actors, writers, filmmakers. It's the same for all of you, all of us. Every step is a first step. Every brush stroke is a test. Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. So, let the learning continue.”
-- Martin ScorseseSource : "5 Great Bits of Advice From Martin Scorsese's NYU Commencement Speech" by Gwynne Watkins, www.yahoo.com. September 16, 2014.
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“If you’re looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“We're face-to-face with images all the time in a way that we never have been before. Young people need to understand that not all images are out there to be consumed like, you know, fast food and then forgotten. We need to educate them to understand the difference between moving images that engage their humanity and their intelligence, and moving images that are just selling them something.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“I didn't realize there are generations who do not know about the origins of film.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“There was always a part of me that wanted to be an old-time director. But I couldn't do that. I'm not a pro.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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.”
-- Martin ScorseseSource : FaceBook post by Martin Scorsese from Dec 15, 2013
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“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“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 -
“I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“When I'm making a film, I'm the audience.”
-- Martin ScorseseSource : "Are we ever going to make this picture?". Interview with Alex Williams, www.theguardian.com. January 2, 2003.
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“Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“If I'm not complaining, I'm not having a good time, hah hah!”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“I have a desire to tell stories. And I'm never quite satisfied.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god... I loved his idea of what filmmaking was.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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.”
-- Martin ScorseseSource : "Mean Streets". www.imdb.com. 1973.
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“Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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 -
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“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“I would ask: Given the nature of free-market capitalism - where the rule is to rise to the top at all costs - is it possible to have a financial industry hero? And by the way, this is not a pop-culture trend we're talking about. There aren't many financial heroes in literature, theater or cinema.”
-- 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 -
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“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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?”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“The Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“One of the things is that the good intentions of Prohibition, from reading over the years and from becoming obsessed with the research of gangs in New York City, seems to have allowed crime figures at the time, like Luciano, Capone, Torrio and Rothstein, to organize to become more powerful, which pulled all the way through until the '70s.”
-- 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 -
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“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 -
“If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller , then you just don’t like cinema.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“There's a way that the force of disappointment can be alchemized into something that will paradoxically renew you.”
-- Martin ScorseseSource : Martin Scorsese's Commencement Address at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, www.theguardian.com. May 15, 2016.
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“I'm going to be 60, and I'm almost used to myself.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“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.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“The only thing I really wanted was the freedom to be able to get what I want on film. I’ve dealt with the MPAA since 1973, so I know how to renegotiate and rework.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“On the one hand, you're the same person, but as you get older, you change somewhat, and you never know how it's going to affect your work.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“The storyboard for me is the way to visualise the entire movie in advance,”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“I'm often asked by younger filmmakers, 'Why do I need to look at old movies?' I've made a number of pictures in the last 20 years and the response I have to give them is that I still consider myself a student. The more pictures I've made in 20 years, the more I realize I really don't know. And I'm always looking for something or someone that I could learn from. I tell the younger filmmakers, and the young students, that do it like painters used to do—that painters do—study the old masters, enrich your palette, expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“It is not the most brilliant that excel in film, but the most patient!”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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“Mean Streets dealt with the American Dream, according to which everybody thinks they can get rich quick, and if they can't do it by legal means then they'll do it by illegal ones.”
-- 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 -
“I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
“I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.”
-- Martin Scorsese -
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