Al Pacino Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I understand the directors much more. I was always rebelling against them when I was a youngster, I didn't want to be told what to do. I had no identification.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 found that speaking live to people, young people, about what I liked and what had been happening to me was very good for me. I was quite overtaken by success and fame. I was one of those types who responded to it in a negative way. It was not easy.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

All due respect, and trying to be as modest as I can be: I am a dancer.

An actor basically likes to be asked to do something, no matter what position he's in. It feels more natural. Sitting and waiting is more gratifying.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I haven't encouraged [Julia Marie Pacino] or discouraged her. I let her go her own way. I did say to her that I thought that she had a real gift, and it's a good idea to know that. It's always good to go with your gift.

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

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.

I can see [ talent or curiosity for acting] in my oldest daughter [Julia Marie Pacino]. I don't know how long she'll run away from it, but it's there in her.

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

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

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

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.

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

Vanity is my favourite sin.

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.

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