"The only person who has the right attitude about boxing in the movies for me was Buster Keaton." [On sports] "Anything with a ball, no good." "Because of the movies I make, people get nervous, because they think of me as difficult and angry. I am difficult and angry, but they don't expect a sense of humor. And the only thing that gets me through is a sense of humor." [On Raging Bull]: "[Robert De Niro] wanted to make this film. Not me. I don't understand anything about boxing. For me, it's like a physical game of chess." "It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily." "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. When Taxi Driver was up for Best Picture, it got three other nominations: Best Actor [Robert De Niro], Best Supporting Actress [Jodie Foster] and Best Music. But the director and writer were overlooked. I was so disappointed, I said, 'You know what?That's the way it's going to be.' What was I going to do, go home and cry?" "Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say: 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear." "I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of the community. I've lived here in Los Angeles, but I'm more of a New Yorker, and the nature of my films is regarded as somewhat violent and the language is considered tough. As you grow older, you change. I make different films now. You don't make pictures for Oscars." "I'm in a different chapter of my life. As time goes by and I grow older, I find that I need to just be quiet and think. There have been periods when I've locked myself away for days, but now it's different - I'm married and we have a daughter who is in my office the whole time." "If I continue to make films about New York, they will probably be set in the past. The 'new' New York I don't know much about. It's not that I'm against contemporary film. I'm open to it in general, but I find the new colours of the city, the new Times Square, kind of shocking. I guess I'm stuck in a time warp." "It probably is better I didn't win in the '70s or mid-'80s or something. My view on making films is somewhat different in a way, and I think maybe it's something that . . . I was not able to handle at the time . . . Had I gotten an Oscar, maybe I would have gotten maybe an extra two days shooting, maybe a couple, you know what I'm saying?" "I prefer celluloid - there's no doubt about it. Yet I know that if I was starting to make movies now, as a young person, if I could get my hands on a DV camera, I probably would have started that way...There's no doubt I'm an older advocate of pure celluloid, but ultimately I see it going by the wayside, except in museums, and even then it could be a problem." "My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else." "There is no such thing as pointless violence. 'City of God' [City of God], is that pointless violence? It's reality, it's real life, it has to do with the human condition. Being involved in Christianity and Catholicism when I was very young, you have that innocence, the teachings of Christ. Deep down you want to think that people are really good - but the reality outweighs that." "I'm a lapsed Catholic. But I am Roman Catholic - there's no way out of it." [on the Iraq war] "One hopes that this kind of war can be done diplomatically, with intelligence rather than wiping out a lot of innocent civilians." [on "political correctness] "You can hardly say anything about minorities now. It has made it extremely difficult to open your mouth." [on the Iraq war] "There are a lot of Americans who also feel that a lot of this war talk is economic, part of this has to do with the oil. I think it really has to come down to respecting how other people live. There's got to be ways this can be worked out diplomatically, there simply has to be." "What does it take to be a filmmaker in Hollywood? Even today I still wonder what it takes to be a professional or even an artist in Hollywood. How do you survive the constant tug of war between personal expression and commercial imperatives? What is the price you pay to work in Hollywood? Do you end up with a split personality? Do you make one movie for them, one for yourself?" "Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out." [On stage at the 2007 Oscars after winning for Best Director] "Could you double-check the envelope..." [about The Departed] "It's the only movie of mine with a plot."