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" I was in the equity-trading department at Merrill Lynch. I was there in 1987 when the market crashed. "
Terence Winter
Market
Department
Crashed
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" My favorite thing to write is people under pressure in high-stakes circumstances. "
Terence Winter
Write
People
Circumstances
" I'm not exaggerating when I say 'Taxi Driver' was the movie that stopped me in my tracks. That was the first time it got me thinking about movies. "
Terence Winter
Time
First
Me
" 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. "
Terence Winter
You
Paint
Humanity
" 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. "
Terence Winter
Real Life
Real
Paper
" 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. "
Terence Winter
Knowledge
You
Ignorance
" There's nothing funnier for me than taking two characters and throwing them into a pressure cooker and letting them turn on each other. Especially if they already tend to be loud, aggressive, alpha types. That's sort of everything from 'The Honeymooners' to 'Goodfellas' to 'The Sopranos.' "
Terence Winter
Everything
Pressure
Nothing
" Critics who do the weekly recap, I find that kind of absurd. That's like reviewing chapters in a novel. "
Terence Winter
Like
Who
Absurd
" 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. "
Terence Winter
People
Think
Behavior
" I'm always amazed by writers who say, 'Oh you know I had a half hour so I sat down and wrote a little bit.' I just need a real big chunk of time to sit down and focus. That's my process. "
Terence Winter
Time
Need
Focus
" For me, I need to fully immerse myself in a script to the point where I'm literally locking myself away for weeks at a time and I just write it. So I can write twelve to fifteen hours in a day, with breaks in between, obviously, but I need to just sort of live within the world of the script. "
Terence Winter
Myself
Time
World
" 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. "
Terence Winter
Morning
Conversation
Early
" There's a certain type of person drawn to the gangster world, and they're generally young men who were predisposed to violence and risk-taking, who like to make a lot of money quickly and wear flashy clothes. "
Terence Winter
World
Money
Violence
" 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. "
Terence Winter
You
Morality
Opinions
" We may live like saints, but when it comes to our fantasy life, everybody's got a little larceny in their soul. "
Terence Winter
Live
Like
Life
" One of the nicest things I ever read about our show was that a critic felt 'Boardwalk Empire' could be the beginning of the blur between television and cinema, because the production values are so high and the storytelling is so compelling. "
Terence Winter
Blur
Empire
Cinema
" I'm not interested in someone's credits. Let me see who you are, and tell me a story of your life. "
Terence Winter
Story
Someone
You
" I started with the book 'Boardwalk Empire' and then immersed myself in the history of Atlantic City, World War I, the temperance movement, Prohibition, pop culture. I even read the news and magazines of the period just to soak in it. That was before I even started thinking of the story. "
Terence Winter
Myself
War
History
" 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. "
Terence Winter
Think
Sing
Know
" With an interesting character, there's always something to say. "
Terence Winter
Interesting
Character
Say
" It used to be that you had to do a certain number of episodes to hit syndication in order to try to keep a show on, because it's important to the network because it sells good commercial time. That's really not how HBO does things. "
Terence Winter
Show
Important
You
" I tend not to read reviews; there's too much out there in cyberspace. "
Terence Winter
Read
Too
Out
" Any distraction tends to get in the way of being an effective gangster. "
Terence Winter
Effective
Gangster
Way
" 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. "
Terence Winter
Speak
Tongue
People
" When Prohibition was first enacted in 1920, most people stockpiled alcohol, thinking they'd have enough to last them for years. By 1923, that was starting to run out, so your average person started to rely more and more on criminals. "
Terence Winter
Run
Thinking
People
" I have a rule: I will not alter the basic history of a real-life character to suit our fictional needs in a big way. "
Terence Winter
History
Will
Suit
" I look at the feature films that come out, and by and large, 85 percent of them are things I wouldn't in a million years sit down and watch. The more interesting storytelling is happening on television by a long shot. "
Terence Winter
Television
Look
Interesting
" 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. "
Terence Winter
Audience
You
Way
" I've had ideas for romantic comedies, but it would be a much more darkly comic version than what usually sells tickets. "
Terence Winter
Ideas
Comic
Than
" First and foremost, you want to be truthful as a storyteller. "
Terence Winter
Storyteller
Truthful
Want
" Very often at the end of 'The Sopranos' you get the feeling that its not under control, you should be very worried, and life is kind of really, really messed up at lot of times. It leaves you feeling very disconcerted. That was kind of the point of it. "
Terence Winter
End
Control
You