“I wanted to be a baseball player, naturally, but I wasn’t good enough.”

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?

The hardest thing is to get started, but the really hardest thing is to finish.

You stand up for your teammates. Your loyalty is to them. You protect them through good and bad, because they’d do the same for you.

The game is supposed to be fun. If you had a bad day, don’t worry. You can’t expect to get a hit every game.

One of the hardest things in life to accept is a called third strike.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying, ‘Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.’ She’s got a baseball bat and yelling, You want a piece of me?

Cricket is basically baseball on valium.

Confidence allows you to progress in something you’re attempting to accomplish, whether it’s playing basketball or baseball or whether it’s trying to succeed in business.