Al Pacino Quotations | Page 2

If something is working, don't fix it. Keep going. Go with the glow.

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.

Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don't sum up a man's life in one moment.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Vanity is my favourite sin.

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

Either I act or I die.

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.

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 I find something and feel as though I can contribute to [it] in a way and feel I'm in it, whatever that means, I'm expressing something that I feel is a way to exercise my talent and help communicate a role as a human being in a movie, I will do that.

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.

There is no happiness. There is only concentration.

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

You'll never be alone if you’ve got a book.

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.

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

All I am is what I'm going after.

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

The actor becomes an emotional athlete.

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

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.

Love goes through different stages. But it endures.

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

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."

A kiss is a lusty dollop of dessert to be served with desire and savored with passion.

The fruit falls off the tree. You don't shake it off before it's ready to fall.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

A lot of acting is private time.

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

Sometimes you're fighting corporations and forget that people can talk to each other.

Take a look at Israel's history and you would know who the terrorist is.

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

Vanity: my favorite sin.

On any given Sunday you're gonna win or you're gonna lose. The point is -- can you win or lose like a man?

They say we die twice - once when the last breath leaves our body and once when the last person we know says our name.

Without coffee something’s missing

If you get all tangled up, just tango on.

You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God... and where can you go from there?

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?

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

Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, but don't swallow.

sometimes it's better to be with the devil u know than the angel u didn't know

It turned out that time doesn't heal the wound , but in its so merciful way , blunts the edges ever so slightly

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.

The camera can film my face but until it captures my soul, you don't have a movie,

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.

There is only one way of surviving all the early heartbreaks in this business. You must have a sense of humor. And I think it also helps if you are a dreamer. I had my dreams all right. And that is something no one can ever take away. They cost nothing, and they can be as real as you like to make them. You own your dreams and they are priceless. I've been a lavatory attendant, a theatre usher, a panhandler, all for real. Now, as an actor, I can be a journalist today and a brain surgeon tomorrow. That's the stuff my dreams are made of.

I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.

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

Either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals.

I'd like to be remembered as the only man who lived to be 250 years old!

I was a kid when Dean came out. Dean was the inspiration. Even the red jacket he wore in 'Rebel Without a Cause,' you saw that red jacket popping up all over the place. He really reached people in a way; it was kind of a phenomenon when you think of it. I wonder what it would be like today, that kind of a person ... he made that connection with his audience. And I remember at that time my mother loved him. He reached everybody.

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

Scarface - first you get the money, then you power and then you get the women

quality is higher, and the films we are choosing are ones that really found their audience in a massive way through DVD.

He sees the gift, ... He sees the real thing, and he's very turned on by that. An old friend of mine used to say, 'If I dig it, it's mine.' And I think with Walter he digs him, he digs what he can do, and therefore it turns him on and he knows he can help him.