Martin Scorsese Quotes

In Brazil, I didn't have it easy growing up.

Raised by an irresponsible mother during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south, my father was on his own from the age of 13.

Growing up in the streets of Bed-Stuy, it was hard, yo.

When I was a kid, I had to fight for everything.

Let's remember the children who come from broken homes, surrounded by crime, drugs, temptation, their peers having babies out of wedlock, but who still manage to get a good education despite the many obstacles they face every day.

I was born in West Baltimore, lived in a situation in which violence was everywhere.

I grew up on the street, and I found a way to vent my frustrations through fighting.

I fought from the time I was eight years old, sometimes three, four fights a night. We did it to eat, and we did it because we were just tough kids.

I was an only child, a hard-case kid, in a rough neighborhood. But I always fought my battles.

You had to be tough to survive in my neighborhood.

When people grow up in atmospheres of violence or atmospheres of poverty, they don't normally use hi-falutin' language to describe those things. They would describe some brutal event the same way we would describe getting a taxi or missing the bus.

In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.

I developed a loyal following. No one knew I was homeless.

I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.

I had to fend for myself from the time I was 17 years old. I was a high-school dropout. I wasn't quite living on the streets, but I didn't have a lot of hope.

I always managed to get in trouble, like every kid. But I had to learn a lot of hard lessons on my own, without parents who would nurture me and guard me through that part of life, at a very young age.

I come from where Mike Tyson came from. I come from right across the street from Jay-Z. I didn't have a pond in my backyard. I saw violence.

I may not remember the name of a book's author, but let it be clear, what I will not forget is the violence, the poverty and the desperation that Mexico is living through.

I was mischievous. I wasn't bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn't know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

You don't need to come from poverty to say growing up is tough. You can have everything in the world going for you and still feel the same loneliness and the same problems that a lot of kids have.

I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afraid.

I believe I could commit a crime. We all can. It depends on which situations we find ourselves in. In despair, I would steal food if my children were hungry.

Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life.

It's hunger. It's homelessness, often. It's underfunded, under-resourced schools. It's abuse beyond the chilling. It's having overwhelmed parents and caregivers. Those are the things that young people are struggling with beyond our view.

My formative years would be in South Central Los Angeles. It was a really volatile environment, but, I always say, when you're living in the hood, you don't live this life where you're crying every day, downtrodden every day.