Top 100 Al Pacino Quotes
#1. 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
#2. When you're reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call "taking up with a writer," something happens.
Al Pacino
#3. Actors are always outsiders. It's necessary to be able to interpret - and that gets distorted when you become famous.
Al Pacino
#4. If something is working, don't fix it. Keep going. Go with the glow.
Al Pacino
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers.
Al Pacino
#8. 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
#9. The literal, basic thing of the stage is really like a magnet. It brings me back to earth.
Al Pacino
#10. What's this thing that gets between us and Shakespeare?
Al Pacino
#11. Sometimes you're fighting corporations and forget that people can talk to each other.
Al Pacino
#12. If you get all tangled up, just tango on.
Al Pacino
#13. It turned out that time doesn't heal the wound , but in its so merciful way , blunts the edges ever so slightly
Al Pacino
#14. The fruit falls off the tree. You don't shake it off before it's ready to fall.
Al Pacino
#15. 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
#16. It's easy to fool the eye but it's hard to fool the heart.
Al Pacino
#17. 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
#18. Doing Shakespeare once is not fair to the play. I have been in Shakespeare plays when it's not until the last two or three performances when I even understand certain things. In the old days star actors would travel the world doing the same parts over and over again.
Al Pacino
#19. I'm so shy now I wear sunglasses everywhere I go.
Al Pacino
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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.
Al Pacino
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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.
Al Pacino
#27. 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.
Al Pacino
#28. Sometimes it's better to be with the devil u know than the angel u didn't know
Al Pacino
#29. Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there's a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself.
Al Pacino
#30. I've often said there's two kinds of actors. There's a more gregarious type and the shy type.
Al Pacino
#31. I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star.
Al Pacino
#32. 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
#33. Theater for me at one point was a lifestyle, too.
Al Pacino
#34. 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
#35. I love work because it keeps sex in perspective. Otherwise, it can become a preoccupation.
Al Pacino
#36. All I am is what I'm going after.
Al Pacino
#37. 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.
Al Pacino
#38. 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
#39. Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.
Al Pacino
#40. 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
#41. 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.
Al Pacino
#42. 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
#43. 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.
Al Pacino
#44. 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
#45. Take a look at Israel's history and you would know who the terrorist is.
Al Pacino
#46. Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, but don't swallow.
Al Pacino
#47. I've never liked the recognition, the questions, the publicity. I have often felt like running away and hiding.
Al Pacino
#49. 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
#50. Drinking and smoking grass were a part of my life as far back as I can remember.
Al Pacino
#51. 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
#52. Love is overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate
Al Pacino
#53. I personally think if you're given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way, the play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There's no doubt in my mind about it.
Al Pacino
#54. I'm always on a red carpet ... the other day I thought, this ain't bad. You can meet people on it.
Al Pacino
#55. I was never very happy with performing; it didn't turn me on much.
Al Pacino
#56. 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
#57. You do get very tired sometimes, when you're sitting around for hours in movies. You get depleted.
Al Pacino
#58. 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.
Al Pacino
#60. Shakespeare's plays are more violent than 'Scarface.'
Al Pacino
#61. 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
#62. Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.
Al Pacino
#63. It's not personal, it's strictly business
Al Pacino
#64. I went to Performing Arts because that was the only school that would accept me. My scholastic level was not very high.
Al Pacino
#65. There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare's.
Al Pacino
#66. 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
#67. At this point in my career, I don't have to deal with audition rejections. So I get my rejection from other things. My children can make me feel rejected. They can humble you pretty quick.
Al Pacino
#68. Money makes your life easier. If you're lucky to have it, you're lucky.
Al Pacino
#69. 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
#70. Sometimes what we imagine and the world aren't different things. Sometimes they are the same exact thing.
Al Pacino
#71. Our life is looking forward or looking back, that's it. Where is the moment?
Al Pacino
#72. I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.
Al Pacino
#73. It wasn't until I got older that I realized acting was something I could really do.
Al Pacino
#74. 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.
Al Pacino
#75. There is no happiness. There is only concentration.
Al Pacino
#76. 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
#77. On any given Sunday you're gonna win or you're gonna lose. The point is
can you win or lose like a man?
Al Pacino
#78. 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.
Al Pacino
#79. Man is a little bit better than his reputation, and a little bit worse
Al Pacino
#80. 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
#81. Sometimes the only way you can get an audience is at an audition.
Al Pacino
#82. 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
#83. Love goes through different stages. But it endures.
Al Pacino
#84. I was not prepared for fame. It hit me hard, and I did not have the capacity to cope.
Al Pacino
#85. Show me a bad script and I will show you a big payday.
Al Pacino
#86. 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.
Al Pacino
#87. The only thing in this world that gives orders is balls.
Al Pacino
#88. We live in a world where the more you're working, the more things you do. It's a workaday world.
Al Pacino
#89. 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.
Al Pacino
#90. I believe in one day at a time; you've got TODAY, that's what you' ve got.
Al Pacino
#91. 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
#92. There has been a lot of self-doubt and unwelcome events in my life.
Al Pacino
#93. 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
#94. I don't ever give my opinion. Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.
Al Pacino
#95. 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.
Al Pacino
#96. 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
#97. 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.
Al Pacino
#98. 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
#99. I don't need bodyguards. I'm from the South Bronx.
Al Pacino
#100. 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
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