James Gandolfini Quotes

I find I have to be the sad clown: laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

I'm an actor... I do a job and I go home. Why are you interested in me? You don't ask a truck driver about his job.

People don't know and they shouldn't know that you work incredibly hard as an actor.

I love hearing people laugh.

You know my feelings: every day is a gift. It's just, does it have to be socks?

I like idiotic comedies.

Standing in public in other people's clothes, pretending to be someone else. It's a strange way for a grown man to make a living.

Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes.

I don't think I will do a Mafia character again. I want to get away from the violence a little bit, because it is starting to bother me personally.

For once I'm not the guy losing my temper all the time.

It is a dark, dark world. If you're going to be in a dark world, I can't think of any better one to be in. I still think I'm very lucky to be in it.

I've been very lucky, considering what I look like and what I do.

I lost 30 pounds to play my character in 'The Mexican,' but people don't take to skinny mafia men, and I don't feel right when I'm thin.

The Sopranos all came down to the writing. I wouldn't have been on for as long as I was if the writing weren't so good.

I just don't think I'm that interesting. I don't think what I have to say is that interesting. To hear me go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, who... cares?

This is gonna sound stupid, but I saw at one point that our mothers are ... bus drivers. No, they are the bus. See, they're the vehicle that gets us here. They drop us off and go on their way. They continue on their journey. And the problem is that we keep tryin' to get back on the bus, instead of just lettin' it go.

Those who want respect, give respect.

Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people.

Both my mother and father were very supportive of any career move any of us wanted to make.

I have a little bit of a temper, but it's ... a useless temper, ... It doesn't accomplish anything, generally. It's just a lot of ranting and raving and nothing, so David (Chase) probably saw that and put it into the character.

Work-do plays, learn your craft, and go to school. Keep working. Nobody is going to give you jobs for going to parties or any of that nonsense. Go out, look around, do things.

I'd love to live in New Orleans. I love the freedom of it - for good and for bad.

I dabbled a little bit in acting in high school and then I forgot about it completely. And then at about twenty-five I went to a class. I don't think anybody in my family thought it was an intelligent choice. I don't think anybody thought I'd succeed, which is understandable. I think they were just happy that I was doing something.

All writers are vampires.

What they say about TV shows is true. You're really a family. You laugh, you fight, you get close, you know? Movies are shorter. They're over quicker. You don't form the same bonds.

Putting somebody else's pants on and pretending to be somebody else is occasionally, as you grow older, horrifying.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

I just think its the changes that age brings. You slow down a little bit ... the writers are smart enough to write all those changes that life gives you.

I've never worked with an actor that I did not like.

I find it hard to relax. I live in New York.

You know, all writers are vampires and they'll look around and they watch you when you're not even thinking they're watching you and they'll slip stuff in.

Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.' Who said it was your character?

I have nothing but respect for HBO.

I love doing theaters, cracking people up, hearing them physically roll in the aisles. But we need to get serious. These are serious times. No joke. No joke.

I like the prop food so much that I eat it between takes as well as on camera.

I was voted best-looking kid in high school but, as you can see, things changed. I used to say I was a 260-pound Woody Allen. You can make that 295-pound now.