“I believe in one day at a time; you’ve got TODAY, that’s what you’ ve got.”

Shakespeare’s plays are more violent than ‘Scarface.’

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

Many years ago, in the late ’70s, I toured colleges along the East Coast and I presented a kind of show where I got a lot of books and poetry and pieces of [William] Shakespeare and other writers that I admire.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete.

I’m more comfortable in a play. In film, there’s always a certain sense of control, of holding back.

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.

When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you.

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.

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.

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.

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

The first matter that the slave will be brought to account for on the Day of Judgment is the prayer.

Anyone who’s had a shower and hasn’t ingested illegal narcotics within a couple of days stands out on a bench in the courthouse.

Don’t I yearn for the days when a draw across the throat made f**king resolution.

As a wise man once said, “April Fools Day is for amateurs. You NEVER need an excuse to mess with people’s heads.”

So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day.

We start to realize that there are anodynes in life that help us through the day.

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.