Mean Streets dealt with the American Dream, according to which everybody thinks they can get rich quick, and if they can't do it by legal means then they'll do it by illegal ones.

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.

Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting

Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

I love movies - it's my whole life, and that's it.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Always stay open to surprise.

I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.

Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.

The student is to read history actively not passively.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

The new enlightened self-understanding reminds us that there is no final destination to our journey. The process itself is the destination. There is nowhere we need to arrive to.

Jose [Mourinho] was one of those guys on a surfboard who can stay longer on the wave than anyone else.

For my part, I wish all guns with their belongings and everything could be sent to hell, which is the proper place for their exhibition and use.

Life with Fools consists in Drinking; with the wise Man, living's Thinking.

Nice guys finish first. If you don't know that, then you don't know where the finish line is.

It will be difficult to let go but it is going to happen sooner rather than later in my case.

The president has the authority to end this dragnet surveillance immediately