“I was shocked when I heard about Paul Newman retiring at age 82. Most actors just fade away like old soldiers.”

If you can identify with people, you can empathize with people and therefore you understand things.

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

The reasons you have for doing a movie will vary with the way your life is going. There was a time when a made a some movies because I felt I needed to work.

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

There was once a great actor named George C. Scott. He was on stage in the Delacourt Theater in Central Park, where they do Shakespeare every summer, and he was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

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 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.

My weaknesses… I wish I could come up with something.

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.

My movies are always being played on television, I’m very well known and all that stuff.

When you’re reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call “taking up with a writer,” something happens.

I’m not a violent person, never was, but I have this temperament that I’ve always displayed.

I never saw myself as a director. It’s certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.

[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.

I don’t need bodyguards. I’m from the South Bronx.

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

I guess I’ll never measure up to anyone’s expectations. I surely don’t measure up to what I’d like to be.

Once you reject evidence as a source of knowledge, you don’t gotta believe nothin’ you don’t like.

She is like a revolving lighthouse; pitch darkness alternating with a dazzling brilliancy!

I don’t like a tremendous amount of conflict. I don’t think that fighting and passion are the same thing.

The audience likes their emotions to be touched. They want to laugh and cry and feel good.

Christ did not suffer so you wouldn’t suffer. He suffered so when you suffer you will become like Him.

Smile and smile often. Smile regularly. Smile when you don’t feel like it and you will feel like it when you smile.

Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I come in?’ is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, ‘I am here.