The first rule of show business is get off the stage while people still want more.
I've always thought that when they say ignorance is bliss, the converse to that is that knowledge is hell. The more you know, the bleaker things can get.
We may live like saints, but when it comes to our fantasy life, everybody's got a little larceny in their soul.
I wrote for 'The Sopranos' and worked on big, blustery characters for quite a while.
Any abhorrent behavior is more interesting to me. I'm always amazed when somebody asks me, 'Why don't you write something about nice people?' Because nice people are boring, that's why.
I think I sing a few songs, and I sing them well, and one of them is the mob genre, you know, as a writer.
It's challenging, in a way, but if you depict anyone with all the colors of human emotion and show those moments - with their families, with their children - the worst of us have elements of real humanity.
I've had ideas for romantic comedies, but it would be a much more darkly comic version than what usually sells tickets.
Critics who do the weekly recap, I find that kind of absurd. That's like reviewing chapters in a novel.
I'm not really gangsta. Not at all. I just write about them. It's fun to pretend, at least on paper. But in real life, not so much.
I think people, whether they realize they're doing it or not, seek out distractions to take their minds off what they know is bad behavior.
With an interesting character, there's always something to say.
I tend not to read reviews; there's too much out there in cyberspace.
If I hear an interesting turn of phrase on TV, I'll repeat it back - I just like to roll it around on my tongue. The same goes for dialog: I'll either speak it aloud or whisper it. I definitely sit in front of my computer and mutter. People have mentioned it.
I was a big fan of the show 'Deadwood' on HBO, which was created by David Milch. And as soon as I heard that all of those characters on Deadwood were based on real people, the first thing I did was Google everybody.
During seventy years of TV, the audience came to feel that the rules are, you can't kill the second lead on your TV show! Whatever's going to happen, it's all okay because there's no way they can kill the star.
One FBI agent told us early on that on Monday morning, they would get to the FBI office, and all the agents would talk about 'The Sopranos', having the same conversation about the show, but always from the flip side.
The thing is, when you paint somebody in all of their colors, they're never all bad or all good. Even the worst person has humanity in there somewhere.
I was in the equity-trading department at Merrill Lynch. I was there in 1987 when the market crashed.
As a writer, I've tried to avoid strong opinions about morality. You just want to present things as they are and let the viewer come to their own conclusion.
