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" 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

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" I tend not to read reviews; there's too much out there in cyberspace. "

" Any distraction tends to get in the way of being an effective gangster. "

" 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

Life

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" J. Edgar Hoover very famously denied the existence of organized crime up until the Appalachian Meeting, I think, in 1957. It was interesting to me that he clearly had to know that there was such a thing as organized crime and organized criminals as far back as the '20s. "

Terence Winter

Know

Interesting

" I wrote for 'The Sopranos' and worked on big, blustery characters for quite a while. "

" I think that 'Vinyl''s faster-paced. I think 'Boardwalk' was much more luxurious in its storytelling. "

" To get to work with my idol, Martin Scorsese, has just been lovely - the highlight of my career. "

" In TV, writers generally are the show runners, and they have enormous control over everything. In feature films, very often the writer will turn in a script and never be heard from again. "

" 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.' "

" I'm not interested in someone's credits. Let me see who you are, and tell me a story of your life. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Any abhorrent behavior is more interesting to me. I'm always amazed when somebody asks me, 'Why don't you write something about nice people?' Because nice people are boring, that's why. "

Terence Winter

Nice

Interesting

" 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. "

" Critics who do the weekly recap, I find that kind of absurd. That's like reviewing chapters in a novel. "

Terence Winter

Who

Absurd

" 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. "

" I've had ideas for romantic comedies, but it would be a much more darkly comic version than what usually sells tickets. "

" 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. "

" Does 'Jersey Shore' make me sad for humanity that this is what's passing for entertainment? Well, this is a business, and if that's what millions of people want to watch, I can't fault someone for producing it. "

" It's challenging, in a way, but if you depict anyone with all the colors of human emotion and show those moments - with their families, with their children - the worst of us have elements of real humanity. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" TV is a level playing field, and you're competing for eyeballs. "

" My favorite thing to write is people under pressure in high-stakes 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