Al Pacino Quotes
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I learned to wrestle, I learned defensive fighting at a young age, because when someone hit me, I would throw up and fall down.
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It's not personal, it's strictly business.
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Our life is looking forward or looking back, that's it. Where is the moment?
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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.
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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.
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I am more alive in the theater than anywhere else, but what I take into the theater I get from the streets.
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If you get all tangled up, just tango on.
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Many years ago, in the late '70s, I toured colleges along the East Coast and I presented a kind of show where I got a lot of books and poetry and pieces of [William] Shakespeare and other writers that I admire, read it to the class and then afterward we would talk and I would answer questions. It was really a way of expressing and finding out about where I was at that particular time, so it was very therapeutic for me.
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Take a look at Israel's history and you would know who the terrorist is.
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I think what you see [in Salome the play backstage] is an artist having this fit of temperament.
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It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.
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Sometimes the only way you can get an audience is at an audition.
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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.
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Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don't sum up a man's life in one moment.
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My early career was a real rush of movies and stardom - it was almost overwhelming.
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Learning (Shakespeare's plays) ...in school was a bit of a bore.
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They say we die twice - once when the last breath leaves our body and once when the last person we know says our name.
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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.
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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.
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That's where humour lives for me. In the body. The Steve Martin kind of stuff or Jim Carrey, that's what I like. I've always felt that's what I would like to do.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.