“Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don’t believe me when I tell them. That’s how I saw myself, in comedy.”

And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie.

Learning (Shakespeare’s plays) …in school was a bit of a bore.

The story of Salome, the play itself and what it is, what it contains, and my journey as an actor, as a director, as a filmmaker, as a person struggling with whatever I’m struggling with.

Here in these films [Salome the play and Salomaybe], I have the opportunity to say something about how I feel about things.

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.

Sometimes they are the same exact thing.

I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.

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?

It would be hard to play a character you don’t like – for me anyway – or can’t find something in them to like.

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.

Certainly the movies were always in the air for me. I come from the era when actors thought it was a big deal to be in the movies.

I’m an actor, not a star. Stars are people who live in Hollywood and have heart-shaped swimming pools.

I once asked my oldest daughter [Julia Marie] if she thought about changing her name in school and she said, “No, I’m a Pacino. That’s my name.”

I had these little babies [my twins] and it gave me something so spectacular, such a feeling – I was so turned on and so excited by them that I wrote a poem.

When you’re acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

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

I didn’t follow the whole ‘X-Men’ story because it got too complicated. I’d pick up a comic book and have no idea what was going on.

Personally, I really enjoy sci-fi. I watch it, I read comic books, and I play video games. I love this kind of world, so too be able to work in it is a dream. I enjoy it.

I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, no matter how comical.

Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.

Every comic can report a few ‘gift from the gods’ moments.

I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn’t include someone the size of the Hindenburg.

Coming up through the ranks of any calling can be rough, but that battered soul who survives the early years of courting the comic muse comes close to knowing what only the soldier knows: What combat is like.

I wasn’t ever a huge fan of comics. Just not one of those kids, you know?