Martin Scorsese Quotes

If you were to hold me to a standard of, 'What are you doing, singing about a scratch-off ticket at your level of success?' then my music's gonna be ridiculous.

You can have integrity with your art, but worrying about integrity doesn't pay the bills.

I'm in a very good place to make records. Needing to make money off music is very dangerous.

Commercialism isn't challenging creatively; it's only challenging in a stamina way.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.

None of my movies have ever made any money, so it's not about commercial success for me. It's always the same thing. I want to create something valuable, something unusual and different that the world has never seen.

There's a difference between making the music for a check vs. what you think you should be doing artistically and creatively.

It's not always about huge giant commercial success. It's about art.

If I wanted to make money I would have written another novel.

I would rather fall flat on my face than try to just make a quick dollar by making music that fits into the radio format right now. It does nothing for me.

A film has to be for commercial success as well as earn you respect as an artist. You don't want to do only things that are designed to run commercially, and neither do you want to do things that get acclaim but don't run.

If I wanted to work financially, I would have made a series of different choices. I do get offered lots of movies which you could make a lot of money out of. And I always say, 'Why would I do that, when someone else could do it much better than me? Why would I want to do an action picture? Why?'

One thing I don't want to feel is marketplace pressure, so I'm really glad I enjoy teaching because I can rely on that for a salary. I think it would be such a different game if I had to write a book that has to sell well.

There was a point I could have just churned out the spot and spin paintings for ever and laughed all the way to the bank.

There's always been an ongoing struggle between commerce and art.

Who decides what is and what isn't punk? I want to write songs that people hear and feel, and I want to be successful and reach a big audience. I'm not trying to be the coolest guy in the world; I'm trying to write songs that mean something to people. As you get successful, sometimes you lose one set of fans and gain another.

Anyone who thinks Peter Jackson would fall for market forces around him rather than artistic integrity doesn't know the guy or the body of his work.

Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling out. Thus, even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has 'sold out' has succeeded, but an artist that has 'sold out' has failed.

The only way you can continue to make artistic films is to make an occasional one of those. They kind of keep your marketability going to the extent that people will employ you.

As an artist, you want to make good stories and create good art; as a businessman, you want to make money and make sure the investors are happy. The two will always clash, unfortunately.

It has nothing to do with commercial success. You cannot calculate in your head how to put the mosaic together to make a commercial film: that's out of the question.

I tell directors, 'I can't promise you a hit, but I can promise you the movie is going to be yours.' When you work for a studio, they pay you a lot of money, but in exchange for that, they tell you what to do.

I realised that success and pure creativity are not very compatible. The more successful you become, the more you become a product of something that generates money. Instead of being able to move forward freely and do what you really wish, you find yourself stuck and obliged to repeat yourself and your previous success.

The music business is a crazy game, especially for somebody like me who is really a purist about the art. Trying to balance the pressures of commercialism, it's a tightrope. It's a fine line between sticking to your guns and insanity.