Martin Scorsese Quotes

I think that 60 percent of inspiration is organization.

That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something.

When I go into making a movie, personally, I don't try to bring other pieces of movies with me.

My insights come in periods of working. There are wonderful moments of surprise, but I'm superstitious enough not to want to talk about them.

Ideas are the root of creation.

As I get on and films take four years to complete, I tend to have a hankering for very short projects so you can move on to the next idea. It's the ideas I'm interested in. What comes out of your head.

I would worry if I wasn't coming up with ideas, if I wasn't inspired.

When I find stuff that's interesting, I try to get a hold of it so that when I do need to make something really cool, I have it on hand.

The truth is, it is hard to know where ideas come from.

Good films that get made are so few and far between. I want to write and direct more, but only so I can keep a fresh perspective.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet.

This is what I always tell my filmmakers-you have to do tons of research, because you don't know where the inspiration is going come from.

Inspiration quite frequently arrives as a surprise. The key is being open to it.

I'm not judging the films. People make these connections through a film, or because they know them. But the fact that they erase them and have to start from scratch, I think that's an important point. A lot of kids, when they have a camera, have tended to do remakes of existing films. You have a lot of kids that make Star Wars. And I think that's creativity, but not as much creativity as starting from scratch.

When you have that first flash of what you think is going to be a great idea-from the mouth, from the hands-that's an amazing feeling. I don't think anything's quite as good as that.

You think you've made something really great, but there's a reason why it's not resonating the way some previous work did. But it's not that easy to just replicate. Some people think, "Oh, just go do that thing you used to do before." But it just doesn't work like that. It's a lot more mysterious or slippery.

Creativity arises out of the state of thoughtless presence in which you are much more awake than when you are engrossed in thinking.

I can't really say - if I've run out of ideas until I've had my next set of ideas.

I'm a very creative person, and the best part about creation is creating. So I always love to come up with new things, new ideas, new thoughts. I cherish things like that.

I think the important thing about staying creative and staying sharp and original is not to look back too much.

I think it's a big part of being a creative person.

There's a paradox in the notion that creativity should be a habit. We think of creativity as a way of keeping everything fresh and new, while habit implies routine and repetition. That paradox intrigues me because it occupies the place where creativity and skill rub up against each other.

An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

Someone very smart once said to me, "Steal, don't borrow." So if there's anything good in anything anyone else does, it's fair game. I think that everything I've ever done at some point is part of someone else's legacy.