Top 120 Al Pacino Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

53. “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

54. “Sometimes you’re fighting corporations and forget that people can talk to each other.”

— Al Pacino

55. “Never let anyone know what you are thinking.”

— Al Pacino

56. “In America most everybody who’s Italian is half Italian. Except me. I’m all Italian. I’m mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.”

— Al Pacino

57. “Love goes through different stages. But it endures.”

— Al Pacino

58. “If something is working, don’t fix it. Keep going. Go with the glow.”

— Al Pacino

59. “It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for ‘Scent of a Woman.’ It was a new feeling. I’d never felt it. I don’t see my Oscar much now. But when I first got it, there was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics.”

— Al Pacino

60. “I have a life and do a lot of things, and so far my work has been my life. If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I’m an artist, I hate saying that.”

— Al Pacino

61. “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

62. “The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful – my personal life suffers.”

— Al Pacino

63. “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

64. “Sometimes what we imagine and the world aren’t different things. Sometimes they are the same exact thing.”

— Al Pacino

65. “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

66. “What’s this thing that gets between us and Shakespeare?”

— Al Pacino

67. “Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.”

— Al Pacino

68. “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

69. “When I was younger, I would go to auditions to have the opportunity to audition, which would mean another chance to get up there and try out my stuff, or try out what I learned and see how it worked with an audience, because where are you gonna get an audience?”

— Al Pacino

70. “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

71. “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

72. “I learned to wrestle, I learned defensive fighting at a young age, because when someone hit me, I would throw up and fall down.”

— Al Pacino

73. “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

74. “I hope the perception is that I’m an actor, I never intended to be a movie star.”

— Al Pacino

75. “Man is a little bit better than his reputation, and a little bit worse.”

— Al Pacino

76. “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

77. “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

78. “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

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

— Al Pacino

80. “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

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

— Al Pacino

82. “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

83. “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

84. “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

85. “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

86. “I’ve always been in the theater. I’ve always gone to it. That’s been my way to cope. Early on in my career, I remember running – fleeing – to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.”

— Al Pacino

87. “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.”

— Al Pacino

88. “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

89. “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

90. “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.”

— Al Pacino

91. “When my mother got home from work, she would take me to the movies. It was her way of getting out, and she would take me with her. I’d go home and act all the parts. It had a tremendous influence on my becoming an actor.”

— Al Pacino

92. “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.”

— Al Pacino

93. “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

94. “It wasn’t until I got older that I realized acting was something I could really do.”

— Al Pacino

95. “I went to Performing Arts because that was the only school that would accept me. My scholastic level was not very high.”

— Al Pacino

96. “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

97. “Actors are always outsiders. It’s necessary to be able to interpret – and that gets distorted when you become famous.”

— Al Pacino

98. “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

99. “I want to be interesting in an interview just as much as I want to do well in a part.”

— Al Pacino

100. “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