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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" People talk about the plots and what happened, and they see your tricks a mile away. "

" If you lose your house and your life savings to a broker, you'd probably throw them in the same category as the worst gangsters in history. Everybody's definition of carnage and evil is different. "

" 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. "

" If you're truly depicting human behavior in an honest way, it is a lot of miscommunication, non-communication, paranoia, passive aggressiveness. People don't finish sentences. They don't say what they mean. They lie to each other. They take credit for things that are actually other people's ideas. "

" With an interesting character, there's always something to say. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" I was a big fan of the show 'Deadwood' on HBO, which was created by David Milch. And as soon as I heard that all of those characters on Deadwood were based on real people, the first thing I did was Google everybody. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" The first rule of show business is get off the stage while people still want more. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" First and foremost, you want to be truthful as a storyteller. "