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"I don't struggle because I was always the stupidest kid in the class and the idea that I would ever be brilliant was knocked out of me in the third grade. So I'm not sitting around trying to be brilliant, or  Shakespeare. I'm just trying to get the work I have in my head down on the page in the best way I possibly know how without putting that horrible pressure on myself of saying 'I'm going to write it today and in 200 years at Princeton they will be studying these words.' Yeah, I want my stuff to be as good as I can conceivably make it, but I am not going to put that on my head." 

"['The Sopranos'] was just this idea about a mobster in therapy... This was uncharted territory. I mean, all of a sudden the guy that your entire network is riding on is going to strangle somebody to death with a piece of piano wire? That had never been done… I said 'This guy is a mob boss in New Jersey. If he doesn't kill this guy, he's worthless as a mob boss. He's worthless as a TV gangster.' And I knew I was right about that." 

"The first show aired February, 1988, and I think it was four days later, overwhelming amount of tips, this sociopathic convicted rapist and murderer was running a shelter for the homeless in Staten Island. His picture had been in the Daily News three months before when then Mayor Koch had brought an award to that homeless shelter. A sociopath hiding in plain sight. Tons of tips. In handcuffs because of this reality television show. I thought this is incredible. This is mind boggling." 

"They didn't tell me. I just opened the script. What they wanted me to do was go down the elevator, which is like a 10 foot drop. And they said, 'You just have to fall.' I said, 'no, I don't. I know that I'm not coming back on this show.' [LAUGH] 'I'm not going to do that for you.' Once again, my stunt double came in and she had to do it like 10 times before the director ever got it right. Ten times! … I mean, I would have had a broken neck by the time I had finished."