“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.”

I’m naturally shy but I’ve done this [movie Salomaybe] so much and you get better at it than you would think.

There has been a lot of self-doubt and unwelcome events in my life.

The play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There’s no doubt in my mind about it.

Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions.

I don’t like what’s going on in Iraq, naturally. I’m part of a large majority of people who don’t, but I do not know the whole story.

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.

I can see [ talent or curiosity for acting] in my oldest daughter [Julia Marie Pacino]. I don’t know how long she’ll run away from it, but it’s there in her.

Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.

A lot of acting is private time.

It used to worry me what people said about me. I’m learning not to worry as much.

Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would’ve wanted to play 10 years ago, I don’t want to play now.

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

I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

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

I did it in Looking for Richard, too. And I figure, if I can weave it into the actual play and get the audience interested, like the robes going up and down, they’ll pay attention long enough to consume it.

To be really obvious about something, if somebody straps an M1 on your shoulder and throws you in Iraq.

If I do feel scared I deliberately challenge myself not to feel scared.

We wander, question. But the answer waits in each separate heart – the answer of our own identity and the way by which we can master loneliness and feel that at last we belong.

I’m not a guy that’s going to brag or feel like I’m better than the group.

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever.

Whenever you feel uncomfortable, instead of retreating back into your old comfort zone, pat yourself on the back and say, “I must be growing,” and continue moving forward.

I don’t have any feeling of accomplishment about anything unless there’s a lot of risk to it.

I do feel like a Clevelander. Every time, when people ask me, I automatically say, ‘My home is Cleveland.’

Sometimes when I perform, and it’s obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.