Al Pacino Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

Vanity is my favourite sin.

A lot of acting is private time.

Either I act or I die.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

You take a guy like George Clooney who goes out there to Darfur, and gets things done! That's magical. He's done a great thing.

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.

I think what you see [in Salome the play backstage] is an artist having this fit of temperament.

When you're reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call "taking up with a writer," something happens.

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.

Great directors can understand the staging in such a way that can make a scene come alive. Others have a certain way of pacing the scene.

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

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

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

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.

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

I've never cared for guns. In fact, when I did 'Scent of a Woman' I had to learn how to assemble one.

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.

I'm always on a red carpet . . . the other day I thought, this ain't bad. You can meet people on it.

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

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

One of the things that made me want to be an actor more than ever was seeing a Chekhov play, "The Sea Gull," when was 14 in the Bronx.