Al Pacino Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Al Pacino.
Famous Quotes By Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
They say we die twice - once when the last breath leaves our body and once when the last person we know says our name. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
I am more alive in the theater than anywhere else, but what I take into the theater I get from the streets. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Sometimes the only way you can get an audience is at an audition. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Either I act or I die. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities. I've never felt sensitive to the whole issue, because being macho has never been a problem with me. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
We live in a world where the more you're working, the more things you do. It's a workaday world. — Al Pacino
I don't need bodyguards. I'm from the South Bronx. — Al Pacino
Sometimes what we imagine and the world aren't different things. Sometimes they are the same exact thing. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. — Al Pacino
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." — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
I believe in one day at a time; you've got TODAY, that's what you' ve got. — Al Pacino
The fruit falls off the tree. You don't shake it off before it's ready to fall. — Al Pacino
It's not personal, it's strictly business — Al Pacino
Drinking and smoking grass were a part of my life as far back as I can remember. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Learning (Shakespeare's plays) ... in school was a bit of a bore. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
I've never cared for guns. In fact, when I did 'Scent of a Woman' I had to learn how to assemble one. — Al Pacino
My first language was shy. It's only by having been thrust into the limelight that I have learned to cope with my shyness. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
It turned out that time doesn't heal the wound , but in its so merciful way , blunts the edges ever so slightly — Al Pacino
The thing that can get you a little upset is when people say other people are better than you. That can bug you. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
The camera can film my face but until it captures my soul, you don't have a movie, — Al Pacino
Our life is looking forward or looking back, that's it. Where is the moment? — Al Pacino
Freedom, baby, is never having to say youre sorry. — Al Pacino
I'm an actor, not a star. Stars are people who live in Hollywood and have heart-shaped swimming pools. — Al Pacino
Our ability to manufacture fraud now exceeds our ability to detect it. — Al Pacino
I was never very happy with performing; it didn't turn me on much. — Al Pacino
I'm always on a red carpet ... the other day I thought, this ain't bad. You can meet people on it. — Al Pacino
[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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
The literal, basic thing of the stage is really like a magnet. It brings me back to earth. — Al Pacino
Love goes through different stages. But it endures. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Take a look at Israel's history and you would know who the terrorist is. — Al Pacino
I love work because it keeps sex in perspective. Otherwise, it can become a preoccupation. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
The World Is Yours — Al Pacino
Responsibilities are relative. My responsibility is to a character in a script, to a part I'm playing. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Without coffee something's missing — Al Pacino
Attica! Attica! Attica! — Al Pacino
Shakespeare's plays are more violent than 'Scarface.' — Al Pacino
I'm so shy now I wear sunglasses everywhere I go. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Sometimes it's better to be with the devil u know than the angel u didn't know — Al Pacino
I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it. — Al Pacino
I've never liked the recognition, the questions, the publicity. I have often felt like running away and hiding. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
Actors are always outsiders. It's necessary to be able to interpret - and that gets distorted when you become famous. — Al Pacino
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? — Al Pacino
There is no happiness. There is only concentration. — Al Pacino
There has been a lot of self-doubt and unwelcome events in my life. — Al Pacino
I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
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. — Al Pacino
I went to Performing Arts because that was the only school that would accept me. My scholastic level was not very high. — Al Pacino
I used to wear disguises, like hats and false beards, just to walk around and avoid attention. — Al Pacino
A kiss is a lusty dollop of dessert to be served with desire and savored with passion. — Al Pacino