Martin Scorsese

As you grow older, you change.

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.

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.

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.

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

I think when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say... well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar.

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.

I've been to North Africa many times.

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

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.

I mean, music totally comes from your soul.

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.

All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.

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

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.

My working-class Italian-American parents didn't go to school, there were no books in the house.

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.

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.

There are times when you have to face your enemies, sit down and deal with it.