Quotes from Martin Scorsese

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

The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.

I've seen many, many movies over the years, and there are only a few that suddenly inspire you so much that you want to continue to make films.

On every film you suffer, but on some you really suffer.

You don't make pictures for Oscars.

You gotta understand, when moving images first started, people wanted sound, color, big screen and depth.

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 mean I have a project that I have been wanting to make for quite a while now; and basically, it's a story of my parents growing up in the Lower East Side.

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?

I think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot another ten days.

Music and film are inseparable. They always have been and always will be.

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

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

I wouldn't presume to be God's point of view.

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

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.

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.

The fact that food plays such an important part in my films has everything to do with my family.

You've got to understand when a collaborator isn't satisfied anymore.

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

It's hard to let new stuff in. And whether that admits a weakness, I don't know.

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

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.

People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.