The weirdest thing with friends, the way you measure it is if you go without communicating for months at a time, you can sit down and within five seconds be right where you were. I know it's a cliché, but quality not quantity, and that bond will not disintegrate. It does need to be tended to but it won't go away. It's amazing, though - I'm here in New York where my best friend from college lives, and we see each other twice a year and we're right where we were and a lot of it's unspoken.

My life philosophy and personality has been driven by the fact that I am incapable of really understanding the future, on some level. I am in this moment. I take risks because I really don't think that far ahead.

I'm in the entertainment business, where you're only as good as your last show.

I don't want to pretend like I'm clairvoyant or anything, but I had a tremendous sense of malaise about our political future. This is right around the millennium, right around 1999, when I wrote it. The Sopranos certainly reflected that; when I saw that on the air, I was like "Oh my God, I'm not alone." But it doesn't seem that the culture really caught up with that. George W. Bush won two elections... I'm not even trying to say this from a political standpoint. I think there is a resonance to the kind of glory of that period, and the foreboding of what happened.

The show is not a history lesson or intellectual exploration. It is entertainment based on tension, irony and storytelling that is closely related to today’s life.

If you've ever had somebody try to sell you something - people who can sell, they really are not manipulating you. They are selling themselves.

I think there's a kind of elegance to it, to work within that framework where what you don't see is often more enticing.