Al Pacino Quotes

Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.

When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you, so that you and the audience are giving to each other, in a sense. It's an extraordinary thing. It's wild turf up there.

Either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals.

I was not prepared for fame. It hit me hard, and I did not have the capacity to cope.

I'm an actor, not a star. Stars are people who live in Hollywood and have heart-shaped swimming pools.

I would say I am more concerned with the plays I'm going to do than the movies. I'm more comfortable in a play. In film, there's always a certain sense of control, of holding back. The stage is different ; there's more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through.

They say we die twice - once when the last breath leaves our body and once when the last person we know says our name.

I am more alive in the theater than anywhere else, but what I take into the theater I get from the streets.

If you get all tangled up, just tango on.

Doing Shakespeare once is not fair to the play. I have been in Shakespeare plays when it's not until the last two or three performances when I even understand certain things. In the old days star actors would travel the world doing the same parts over and over again.

The difference between the actor and the painter is that the actor would buy somebody a knish in order to have them watch him act.

Learning (Shakespeare's plays) ... in school was a bit of a bore.

Vanity is my favourite sin.

I wouldn't be interested in [nowadays] television simply because I think it goes too fast. Except if something was maybe a play on television or some great television script.

Freedom, baby, is never having to say youre sorry.

You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God ... and where can you go from there?

The reasons you have for doing a movie will vary with the way your life is going. There was a time when a made a some movies because I felt I needed to work. And I didn't think about the material as much. But sometimes I've thought about the material a lot and thought I was doing the right thing, and it didn't work out.

Sometimes you're fighting corporations and forget that people can talk to each other.

I went back to the stage because it was my way of dealing with the success I had, my way of coping. It was a way of escaping the responsibilty of what was happening.

We start to realize that there are anodynes in life that help us through the day. I don't care if it's a walk in the park, a look out the window, a good bubble bath - whatever. Even a meal you like, or a friend you want to call. That helps us solve all this stuff in our head.

Playing a character is an illusion, and I feel that when you know too much about a person, possibly part of that illusion is disrupted.

I learned to wrestle, I learned defensive fighting at a young age, because when someone hit me, I would throw up and fall down.

A lot of acting is private time.

It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.

My weaknesses ... I wish I could come up with something. I'd probably have the same pause if you asked me what my strengths are. Maybe they're the same thing.

I want to be a great actor someday, and I've decided there's no use philosophizing; the only way is to work at my craft.

I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.

The only thing in this world that gives orders is balls.

Man is a little bit better than his reputation, and a little bit worse

I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.

Acting is hard work. At times, it's very energizing and enervating. It's childish. It's also responsible. It's illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It's bizarre, diabolical. It's exciting.

Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there's a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself.

I always had this thing, when I was younger especially, I didn't want to do movies that much. I found they took a lot out of you and they were exhausting for me in a lot of ways.

I don't regret anything. I feel like I've made what I would call mistakes. I picked the wrong movie, or I didn't pursue a character, but everything you do is part of you and you get something from it.

Whether he's doing great acting or not, you're seeing somebody who is in the tradition of a great actor. What he does with it, that's something else, but he's got it all. The talent, the instrument is there, that's why he has endured.

When my mother got home from work, she would take me to the movies. It was her way of getting out, and she would take me with her. I'd go home and act all the parts. It had a tremendous influence on my becoming an actor.

Attica! Attica! Attica!

Failure's relative. I've always felt, even early on, if I lose the freedom to fail, something's not right about that. It's how you treat failure, too. There's something to learn from it. I've had movies that have failed colossally, so you kind of analyze your failures: What kind of failure was it? A failure because it's misunderstood by others? A failure because you misunderstood it yourself?

Sometimes what we imagine and the world aren't different things. Sometimes they are the same exact thing.

Theater for me at one point was a lifestyle, too.

I don't ever give my opinion. Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.

I believe in one day at a time; you've got TODAY, that's what you' ve got.

I've often said there's two kinds of actors. There's a more gregarious type and the shy type.

A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' ... because you read the stage directions, too.

My first language was shy. It's only by having been thrust into the limelight that I have learned to cope with my shyness.

What's this thing that gets between us and Shakespeare?

It used to worry me what people said about me. I'm learning not to worry as much. Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don 't take objection to it, because that's the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind.

The fruit falls off the tree. You don't shake it off before it's ready to fall.

I like, for instance, 'Serpico.' I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could - I could embody him. I could, you know, I could work and get to know him and have him help me with the text, the script and become him. It's almost like a painter having a model to become.

I'm so shy now I wear sunglasses everywhere I go.

If something is working, don't fix it. Keep going. Go with the glow.

I turned down a lot of films before I made my first one. I knew that it was time for me to get into movies.

I was never very happy with performing; it didn't turn me on much.

There are people whose sense of reality is very strong, who have a sense of honesty. Lee Strasberg is like that, my grandfather was like that. These are the kinds of men I've had close relationships with.

My grandmother always came to my shows. She was always concerned about the way I dressed - even later on, when I was well known and I supported her.

Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, but don't swallow.

I didn't go for the needle at all. I never cared for drugs, because I saw what they did to most people. I thought that was the end of the road.

A kiss is a lusty dollop of dessert to be served with desire and savored with passion.

I come from the South Bronx - a true descendant of the melting pot. I grew up in a really mixed neighborhood; it was a very integrated life.

Women! What can you say? Who made 'em? God must have been a fuckin' genius. The hair ... They say the hair is everything, you know. Have you ever buried your nose in a mountain of curls ... just wanted to go to sleep forever? Or lips ... and when they touched, yours were like ... that first swallow of wine ... after you just crossed the desert.

I've always been in the theater. I've always gone to it. That's been my way to cope. Early on in my career, I remember running - fleeing - to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.

Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don't sum up a man's life in one moment.

Our life is looking forward or looking back, that's it. Where is the moment?

I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?

It turned out that time doesn't heal the wound , but in its so merciful way , blunts the edges ever so slightly

I don't need bodyguards. I'm from the South Bronx.

In America most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.

Romantic love can be a lot of crap, though, let me tell you. And it can hurt you.

If I find something and feel as though I can contribute to [it] in a way and feel I'm in it, whatever that means, I'm expressing something that I feel is a way to exercise my talent and help communicate a role as a human being in a movie, I will do that.

If you have the opportunity to meet someone as an actor, it's just great fodder for you. It's wonderful source stuff that we die for.

Shakespeare is one of the reasons I've stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words ... I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

There has been a lot of self-doubt and unwelcome events in my life.

I wanted to be a baseball player, naturally, but I wasn't good enough. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I just had a kind of energy, I was a fairly happy kid.

Any project that I find encouraging that isn't attached to a studio, I can go to them, which I definitely would. You have to take an interest in what you do.

Vanity: my favorite sin.

Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.

Sometimes the only way you can get an audience is at an audition.

There was a time in my life when being dishonest with women was the natural way to be. I finally said, "Hey, I have to stop this silliness."

Responsibilities are relative. My responsibility is to a character in a script, to a part I'm playing.

The World Is Yours

My grandfather was a provider. Work, any kind of work, was the joy of his life. So I grew up having a certain relationship to work. It was something that I always wanted.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers.

Love goes through different stages. But it endures.

Certainly the movies were always in the air for me. I come from the era when actors thought it was a big deal to be in the movies.

You don't get to know anybody in a movie until after it's over. You work less together in a film than you do onstage.

On any given Sunday you're gonna win or you're gonna lose. The point is
can you win or lose like a man?

Forget the career, do the work. If you feel what you are doing is on line and you're going someplace and you have a vision and you stay with it, eventually things will happen.

The truth is, you know, we need our anodynes. You know that word, anodynes? We need that in life some times. A good warm bath can be one for you, or a whatever.

Sometimes it's better to be with the devil u know than the angel u didn't know

[Marlon] Brando's a giant on every level. When he acts it's as if he landed from another planet. A planet where they produce great actors.

The thing is doing it, that's what it's all about. Not in the results of it. After all what is a risk? It's a risk not to take risks. Otherwise, you can go stale and repeat yourself. I don't feel like a person who takes risks. Yet there's something within me that must provoke controversy because I find it wherever I go. Anybody who cares about what he does takes risks.

I' ve won awards. And they didn't make me feel bad winning them. They made me feel pretty good. But it also did not make me feel bad NOT winning the Academy Award.

It's easy to fool the eye but it's hard to fool the heart.

I'm constantly striving to break through to something new. You try to maintain a neutral approach to your work, and not be too hard on yourself.

The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

I want to be interesting in an interview just as much as I want to do well in a part.

You do get very tired sometimes, when you're sitting around for hours in movies. You get depleted.

I used to say I wanted to genuflect to a woman, put her up on a pedestal higher and higher, way up beyond my grasp ... Then I'd find another one.

Money makes your life easier. If you're lucky to have it, you're lucky.

My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really, I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.