It doesn't matter if your lead character is good or bad. He just has to be interesting, and he has to be good at what he does.
Don't get too comfortable. We are here for a certain period of time, and how much of your life are you gonna choose to spend with distractions? How do you make your choices? What is important?
I think that the difference between The Sopranos and the shows that came before it was that it was really personal. There had been a lot of dramas, a lot of really good ones, a lot of really bad ones, but they were always franchise shows about cops, or doctors, or lawyers. They weren't about the writer himself.
You know, what's interesting is, being your own self is kind of a blur.
When we were doing 'The Sopranos', I used to love that about it. There were rules, Mafia codes you had to go by, but the code is ridiculous. It's a code among sociopaths.
The Sopranos' is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes - infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh.
There's something very dreamlike about film, and I will always be very fascinated by that, and I'm always tempted to go in that direction.
People have said that I said I hate television. I never did say that. What I said was that I hated a lot of stuff that was on television. It's nothing about the medium itself.
Hope comes in many forms.
I think storytelling is all about children. We human beings love to hear stories being told - and it first happens when you're a kid.
I have a huge editor in my head who's always making me miserable. But sometimes, I try to let my unconscious act out.
When I was doing 'The Sopranos,' I liked putting music together with the film; that was my favorite part of it.
The Sopranos was the first show about the life of the writer. I never made any secret about the fact that it was about my mother.
James Gandolfini was a genius. Anyone who saw him even in the smallest of his performances knows that. He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time... A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes. I remember telling him many times, 'You don't get it. You're like Mozart.'
I would imagine that the more time you spend talking to another person, the more you're going to lie to them. So if you spend a lot of time with your relations, you're probably lying a lot to them.
Psychology doesn't address the soul; that's something else.
I think for anyone who follows the 'artistic life,' a certain amount of selfishness and self-involvement is part of the package. You're probably already disregarding a certain material life you could have.
You see Michelangelo and Picasso and you read literature. I had some innate inchoate yearning for that, but I never really saw where I would fit in. That's called art. And then something happened to pop music, which is that it became art under the hand of the Beatles, the Stones, and Bob Dylan and some other people.
When I was a kid, I used to watch 'Laurel and Hardy' with my cousins all the time. I still think they're extremely funny and so surreal.
Network television is all talk. I think there should be visuals on a show, some sense of mystery to it, connections that don't add up.
Cancer don't respect nothing.
Television is a prisoner of dialogue and steady-cam. People walk down a hall, and the camera follows them around a corner.
I think people are intolerant of artists.
But cheer up - we could be selling tobacco. It's not like software kills people if used as intended
I really like comedy. There's always a choice, when you're writing: you can either go for the joke or you can go for the story, the important stuff.
