Martin Scorsese Quotes (1942-)

“But I do think it’s important to make younger people aware of what came before in every aspect of every art form. And it’s exciting too, and as you do that very often if you’re working with young people and working with students. I use mentoring, the idea is you do get a lot out of it. I do get a kind of regeneration of that, to see that excitement sometimes, to show, let’s say The Magic Box or Yojimbo - it’s part of being alive.”

“I do my own penance for my own sins. What do you say, huh? Ah, it's all bullshit except the pain, right? The pain of hell, the burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite, and you don't fuck around with the infinite. There's no way you do that. The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand, the kind you can feel in your heart. Your soul, the spiritual side, and you know the worst of the two is the spiritual.”

“In the late 60s, there was a big probability of Satyajit Ray coming down to Hollywood to shoot The Alien based on his own short story which appeared in the then popular Bengali magazine, Sandesh. The film was to be produced by 20th Century Fox and Hollywood was waiting to embrace Ray with open arms. Alas! Due to some dirty politics played by unknown quarters, Ray's Hollywood dream had to be shelved. I have no qualms in admitting that Spielberg's E.T. was influenced by Ray's Alien. Even Sir Richard Attenborough pointed this out to me.”

“I read the script and liked its simplicity, the childlike nature of it, that it wasn't a treatise on Buddhism or a historical epic in the usual sense. It's just too much to know about Tibet and China and their relationship over the past fifteen hundred years. That was all incidental. What you really dealt with was the child and the child becoming a young boy and the boy becoming a young man —his spiritual upbringing, and this incredible responsibility which he inherits and how he deals with it on the basis of nonviolence. And the concept of him escaping and taking Tibetan culture and religion with him to the rest of the world.”

“Catherine Deneuve seems to have been made for cinema, and cinema for her. She IS French cinema. She seems to be getting more adventurous every year.”

“You say, 'Gee, I wish he'd made more [films].' But these were enough. Because there's so much in each one. You know, there's so much. Yeah, it would've been nice for him to have made more. But that's not the process. That wasn't his process, and what he did make was something so special and unique, it's like a different movie every time you see it.”

“He reminds me of that excitement when De Niro and I stumbled upon a way of working together - a similar kind of energy to the actors in the 1970s. It’s very rare for me to find that kind of connection again. Leo will give me the emotion where I least expect it and could only hope for it about three or four scenes. And he can do it take after take."”

“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.”