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.

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.'

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.

Television is a prisoner of dialogue and steady-cam. People walk down a hall, and the camera follows them around a corner.

Hope comes in many forms.

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.

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.