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

Relationship Men Love

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Martin Scorsese

Movies T Ram

You never know how much time you have left.

Martin Scorsese

Time You Tim

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

World Understand UN

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

Martin Scorsese

Thing Thin T

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

Who Way Tolerance

When I'm making a film, I'm the audience.

Martin Scorsese

T Making King

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

Martin Scorsese

Food Your You

My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.

Martin Scorsese

Religion Movies Life

Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.

Martin Scorsese

Food You Who

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

Good Alone Age

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

Happiness Wing Win

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

Martin Scorsese

Love History Yin

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

Relationship Men Love

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

Power Money You

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

Martin Scorsese

Religion Tin Think

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

Time You Where

Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.

Martin Scorsese

Work Experience You

There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.

Martin Scorsese

War World War II World War

Very often I've known people who wouldn't say a word to each other, but they'd go to see movies together and experience life that way.

Martin Scorsese

Movies Life Experience

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

Martin Scorsese

Time Good Tim

I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually.

Martin Scorsese

I mean, music totally comes from your soul.

Martin Scorsese

You don't make pictures for Oscars.

Martin Scorsese

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.

Martin Scorsese

Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.

Martin Scorsese

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

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

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

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

Martin Scorsese

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

Martin Scorsese

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

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

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

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

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

I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.

Martin Scorsese

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

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

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 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.

Martin Scorsese

I was born in 1942, so I was mainly aware of Howard Hughes' name on RKO Radio Pictures.

Martin Scorsese

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

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

I happen to like vampires more than zombies.

Martin Scorsese

Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing.

Martin Scorsese

It's interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.

Martin Scorsese

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.

Martin Scorsese

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.

Martin Scorsese

The young people today are the 21st century.

Martin Scorsese