Al pacino quotes

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.

I don't talk politics and I don't talk philosophy or anything like that, but if you look at my work, you might get an expression of me as a person.

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

Vanity: my favorite sin.

There are a couple of times I would've liked to have married. I think I made a mistake, especially once.

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.

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.

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.

I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star.

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

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

Love is overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate

If you can identify with people, you can empathize with people and therefore you understand things.

People are always asking me to do Shakespeare - at home, at colleges, on film locations, in restaurants. It's like playing a piece of music, getting all the notes. It's great therapy.

I destroy the painting as soon as I can see what it is. When I can make out something in it, I destroy it because it's no longer coming from my unconscious.

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

Vanity is my favourite sin.

The hardest thing about being famous is that people are always nice to you. You're in a conversation and everybody's agreeing with what you're saying - even if you say something totally crazy. You need people who can tell you what you don't want to hear.

I'm not a violent person, never was, but I have this temperament that I've always displayed. I guess it has to do with my tradition and being Italian, we're very outgoing with our emotions.

When [Julia Marie Pacino] was 5 or 6 years old, we were in an Italian restaurant, and these people came by the table and they would start talking to me, asking me for my autograph and she just went under the table.

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

Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie.

The camera can film my face but until it captures my soul, you don't have a movie.

The literal, basic thing of the stage is really like a magnet. It brings me back to earth.

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

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.

Show me a bad script and I will show you a big payday.

Drinking and smoking grass were a part of my life as far back as I can remember.

It's not personal, it's strictly business

The actor becomes an emotional athlete.

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

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.

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.

Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It's a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It's sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.

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

I don't like what's going on in Iraq, naturally. I'm part of a large majority of people who don't, but I do not know the whole story. I do not believe what I see on television. I believe a percentage of it, so it's hard for me to discern. I don't like what it's doing to the world.

We were doing Scarface many years ago...and I remember having my coffee and looking at the beach, the surf, and I saw a hundred people looking out into the ocean. I thought, what's going on? Did some whale get washed up to shore? So I stood up on the table to see what it was, and it was the director, Brian De Palma, standing there alone by the surf and they were all waiting for him. And I never forgot that because it represented to me what a director is, what a director does.

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

Is it possible to do something that that makes an audience uncomfortable, challenges them, makes them see things they're not used to? Here in these films [Salome the play and Salomaybe], I have the opportunity to say something about how I feel about things.

A lot of acting is private time.

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.

All due respect and trying to be as modest as I can be, I am a dancer. But I don't think I would be on 'Dancing with the Stars,' mainly because I would be too shy.

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."

I've had very deep relationships that lasted for long periods of time with people - you could almost call them marriages, even though I didn't marry. But it was costly.

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

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 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.

When you do these things, you sort of take the journey. The journey is all about how I can interweave the Oscar Wilde story, the story of Salome, the play itself and what it is, what it contains, and my journey as an actor, as a director, as a filmmaker, as a person struggling with whatever I'm struggling with - my own celebrity, my own life. This is semi-autobiographical in terms of my commitment to this kind of thing.

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.

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.

"To be or not to be is" [by William Shakespeare] beyond anything I can comprehend. I understand it on a superficial level, but the depth of it just boggles my mind. I think it's probably the greatest of all speeches ever written.

I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.

My best advice to any young person is, if you want kids, be careful who you have them with. That's my mantra.

Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would've wanted to play 10 years ago, I don't want to play now.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I like women who can cook. That's first. Love is very important, but you've got to have a friend first - you want to finally come to a point where you say that the women you're with is also your friend.

I don’t understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians… it’s a concept I honestly cannot grasp. To me, it’s not who you love… a man, a woman, what have you… it’s the fact that you love. That is all that truly matters.

I went to Performing Arts because that was the only school that would accept me. My scholastic level was not very high.

If you get all tangled up, just tango on.

We live in a world where the more you're working, the more things you do. It's a workaday world.

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.

I was playing a part of someone dealing dope on a street corner - and there was a guy actually dealing heroin right there. I looked at him, he looked at me, and I got real confused.

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

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

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.

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

Take a look at Israel's history and you would know who the terrorist is.

The thing that can get you a little upset is when people say other people are better than you. That can bug you.

Shakespeare's plays are more violent than 'Scarface.'

I don't think actors should ever expect to get a role, because the disappointment is too great. You've got to think of things as an opportunity. An audition's an opportunity to have an audience.

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

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.

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

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

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

Actors are always outsiders. It's necessary to be able to interpret - and that gets distorted when you become famous.

Actually, the person I related to was James Dean. I grew up with the Dean thing. Rebel Without A Cause had a very powerful effect on me.

You'll never be alone if you’ve got a book.

When I was doing 'Scarface,' I remember being in love at that time. One of the few times in my life. And I was so glad it was at that time. I would come home and she would tell me about her life that day and all her problems and I remember saying to her, look, you really got me through this picture because I would shed everything when I came home.

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

All I am is what I'm going after.

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.

I found out how temperamental I am, yes. And that sometimes that can be kind of off-putting.

I don't like a lot of things like [Iraq], I never did. Being in a position of celebrity and having your words carry such unnatural weight...I've always been a bit squeamish when it came to that kind of thing.

There was once a great actor named George C. Scott. He was on stage in the Delacourt Theater in Central Park, where they do Shakespeare every summer, and he was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. At one point he took the robes he was wearing and just started flipping them up in the air, out of nowhere. And later, an actor said to him, "What was that, George, what were you doing?" And he said, "They were sleeping." You're always trying to catch them.

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

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

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.

That's the way to live - around people who care. It may be a tough ride, but something is going to come out of it.

I love work because it keeps sex in perspective. Otherwise, it can become a preoccupation.

Without coffee something’s missing

I once asked my oldest daughter [Julia Marie] if she thought about changing her name in school and she said, "No, I'm a Pacino. That's my name." I just wondered how it would feel, how people would treat her, but she's adjusted so marvelously.

Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.

The problem with me is, I guess, the way I express myself, you have to be with me 50 years before you can get a sense of what I'm talking about.

There are many things my father taught me here in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

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.

It's never really that much fun for me to do movies anyway, because you - you know, you have to get up very early in the morning and you have to go in and you spend a lot of time waiting around.

Our ability to manufacture fraud now exceeds our ability to detect it.

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.

Either I act or I die.

Love goes through different stages. But it endures.

I'm an actor, and everything about me - the way I perceive things, the way I have seen the world - has been in relation to characters and how I would want to play something or not play it.

You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.

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.

There is only one way of surviving all the early heartbreaks in this business. You must have a sense of humor. And I think it also helps if you are a dreamer. I had my dreams all right. And that is something no one can ever take away. They cost nothing, and they can be as real as you like to make them. You own your dreams and they are priceless. I've been a lavatory attendant, a theatre usher, a panhandler, all for real. Now, as an actor, I can be a journalist today and a brain surgeon tomorrow. That's the stuff my dreams are made of.

There is no happiness. There is only concentration.

When I was younger, there was the sex thing. That's par for the course.When you're a movie star, it went with it. It's a kind of rite of passage, socially.

When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I'm going to do a big scene that's dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.

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

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

You need some insecurity if you're an actor. It keeps the pot boiling. I haven't yet started to think about retiring. I was shocked when I heard about Paul Newman retiring at age 82. Most actors just fade away like old soldiers.

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

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

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?

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

It wasn't until I got older that I realized acting was something I could really do.

Being the actors of the craft, the trade, one of the big things you do and you learn is about repeating. There is something to the repeats. I think that is part of what is healthy to young actors. Get out and learn something just through doing that, repeating.

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

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

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