“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 Scorsese
“Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.” Martin Scorsese KnowledgeWorkCinemaBrainyMovieFrame
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Our world is so glutted with useless information, images, useless images, sounds, all this sort of thing. It's a cacophony, it's like a madness I think that's been happening in the past twenty-five years. And I think anything that can help a person sit in a room alone and not worry about it is good.” 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
“Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.” Martin Scorsese LifeWiseLivePeopleFoodEverything
“I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.” 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 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
“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
“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
“There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.” 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
“People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.” 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
“Death comes in a flash, and that's the truth of it, the person's gone in less than 24 frames of film.” Martin Scorsese
“A lot of what I'm obsessed with is the relationship and the dynamics between people and the family, particularly brothers and their father.” Martin Scorsese
“What the Dalai Lama had to resolve was whether to stay in Tibet or leave. He wanted to stay, but staying would have meant the total destruction of Tibet, because he would have died and that would have ripped the heart out of his people.” Martin Scorsese
