David Chase Quotations

I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.

Once the subject matter of rock n' roll changed from cars and pop love songs to songs about really true love and the blues and death and mortality, this light bulb went off in my head and I went, 'Oh, that's what they're doing. That's kind of - that's art.'

When I was a kid, I used to watch 'Laurel and Hardy' with my cousins all the time. I still think they're extremely funny and so surreal.

I said it's a cold universe and I don't mean that metaphorically. If you go out into space, it's cold. It's really cold and we don't know what's up there. We happen to be in this little pocket where there's a sun. What have we got except love and each other to guard against all that isolation and loneliness?

I think storytelling is all about children. We human beings love to hear stories being told - and it first happens when you're a kid.

I think that the difference between 'The Sopranos' and the shows that came before it was that it was really personal. There had been a lot of dramas, a lot of really good ones, a lot of really bad ones, but they were always franchise shows about cops, or doctors, or lawyers. They weren't about the writer himself.

When we were doing 'The Sopranos', I used to love that about it. There were rules, Mafia codes you had to go by, but the code is ridiculous. It's a code among sociopaths.

When I was doing 'The Sopranos', I liked putting music together with the film; that was my favorite part of it.

I think for anyone who follows the 'artistic life,' a certain amount of selfishness and self-involvement is part of the package. You're probably already disregarding a certain material life you could have.

You see Michelangelo and Picasso and you read literature. I had some innate inchoate yearning for that, but I never really saw where I would fit in. That's called art. And then something happened to pop music, which is that it became art under the hand of the Beatles, the Stones, and Bob Dylan and some other people.

Hitchcock was one of the few people in Hollywood who had a brand. Every movie he made was an Alfred Hitchcock movie, couldn't have been anyone else.

I have a huge editor in my head who's always making me miserable. But sometimes, I try to let my unconscious act out.

People have said that I said I hate television. I never did say that. What I said was that I hated a lot of stuff that was on television. It's nothing about the medium itself.

There's something very dreamlike about film, and I will always be very fascinated by that, and I'm always tempted to go in that direction.

I would imagine that the more time you spend talking to another person, the more you're going to lie to them. So if you spend a lot of time with your relations, you're probably lying a lot to them.

I had a prior deal in place to do a miniseries for HBO, so I'm not done with TV. But I basically want to stay in movies.

I really like comedy. There's always a choice, when you're writing: you can either go for the joke or you can go for the story, the important stuff.

I've said this a million times. But I've always wanted to do movies.

Network television is all talk. I think there should be visuals on a show, some sense of mystery to it, connections that don't add up.

People who need therapy are in Afghanistan. They've seen horrible human cruelty and degradation, but they don't have time or the money for therapy.

Television is a prisoner of dialogue and steady-cam. People walk down a hall, and the camera follows them around a corner.

'The Sopranos' is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes - infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh.

The thing about movies now is in a way what it always was: The screen is huge and now the sound systems are too. And you never get that with TV. Even with a home system, it's never the same.

We're making a show about a particular group of people. We don't try to maintain an outlaw status, but they are outlaws.

Last year, we felt we needed more teachers. I'm troubled that we're not going after personnel just because we don't have the room for them.

None of us on the show, ... ever thought it would do anything.

One would think that when we've been talking about a referendum for over a year, you'd think that we'd have a clear direction by this time. After all, the superintendent has been in charge for about eight months.

I don't have to come to work, grab my pretend son, smash him up against the refrigerator and get in his face. For him to work himself up to that, where you're in that kind of moment and believing that, it must not be easy.

I don't know. When I talk to people, they seem to want it to come back. If somebody wants to watch another show, that's great.

He heard us hum maybe three notes and he started humming the whole song. Why he knows it, why people know it, I couldn't tell you. But they really do.

Hopefully the proposal will include a delivery system that shows how (the district) will deliver the projects in a more effective way than in the past.

I think the board and the district have lost 90 precious days of progress in solving the problem of growth in this community.

I think what we'll be doing in (the final 20 episodes) would be that movie.

It is horrible. On some level that sort of is the downside of being a well-liked show, especially this show. We're in the public eye so much. We get reviewed every Monday. At the same time you can't quarrel with that. It is great that people take an interest. But yeah, it is a lot of pressure.

On the show Tony Sirico is a pillar. Off camera he's a dear friend. This is a great charity, a great day.

People have the chance to see a possible, potential future for themselves in that, and it has a ripple effect.

I think kind of disquieted, sort of rattled. Not feeling like things are going well.

We haven't talked about it in a long time. ... It's hard to see how it would work. I think what we're going to be doing the next year and a half would have been that movie.

Yeah. I think we're all going to be really sad when it's ended. Everybody, hopefully, will feel we've done good work, and there won't be that huge amount of responsibility and work to do. But I'm sure we're all going to be very sad.

The Sopranos' is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes - infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh.

James Gandolfini was a genius. Anyone who saw him even in the smallest of his performances knows that. He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time... A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes. I remember telling him many times, 'You don't get it. You're like Mozart.'

You know, what's interesting is, being your own self is kind of a blur.

I think people are intolerant of artists.

Cancer don't respect nothing.

Hope comes in many forms.

Psychology doesn't address the soul; that's something else.

It doesn't matter if your lead character is good or bad. He just has to be interesting, and he has to be good at what he does.

Don't get too comfortable. We are here for a certain period of time, and how much of your life are you gonna choose to spend with distractions? How do you make your choices? What is important?

I'm the number-one fan of gangster movies.

The Sopranos was the first show about the life of the writer. I never made any secret about the fact that it was about my mother.

People get so tired of the '60s.

But cheer up - we could be selling tobacco. It's not like software kills people if used as intended

We have eight more games to go; and we want to win them all. If we can win a title, people will think we're for real. We can't take anything for granted.

There will be these 12 (upcoming episodes) and then another eight, and that will be the end.

Your father tells you a story when you're a kid, or your mother or your uncle or whoever it is. You sit there with your mouth open, and your mind goes to all these places they're telling you about that you've never seen, and you're agape. You just can't believe that things can happen like that - but it's just so direct.

They're on edge, disquieted, off balance. What a short time we're on this Earth.

There's a tremendous amount of camaraderie between these guys, as well as a lot of competition and backbiting. They come to me and say, 'Why did he get to do this? Why did he get to do that?' A lot like they are on the show with Tony. And it's true that when they're together, a kind of group-think takes over.

It may be that in two or three or four years I could be sitting around and get an idea for a really great 'Sopranos' movie. I don't think that will happen. But if one morning somebody woke up and said this would make a really good, concise, contained 'Sopranos' story, I wouldn't rule that out.

It's unfortunate that this proposal didn't come forward in October because we have lost serious time getting these facilities together for the Bluffton children.

Notre Dame was a big game for us - a statement game. We were still stinging from the loss to Ridgefield. We showed we could beat a quality team.

I mean a couple of years ago (HBO head) Chris Albrecht called me and said we should really seriously think about how long we want to go and how this thing should end. So I took that to heart and thought about it a long time and plotted it out and this will be the end, yeah.

I hope that over the past seven years we succeeded in bringing a little of it back.

I have no idea what (Campbell and Baker) said, what they told them. I haven't voted for a primary site -- location or site. It's all still in process.

I have Tony?s background in my head very clearly. I keep creating his back story as we go along, and it seems like I?m the only one who can do that, or should.

I don't pretend to have a crystal ball. But I have great confidence that politically they're going to work this out for the children.

I do think I've been part of something extraordinary here.

I don't want to detract from the group's good intentions and time commitment, ... (But) I'm not clear what their mission is.

I don't want to depend on the developer to come back and say, 'This is where we are,' because that never happens.

He believed that it would bring, you know, those elements to the show. I think we have an incredible crew of unbelievable creative people who didn't want to, you know, leave home. And they were willing to work 18 hours a day.

The truth is both, really. Obviously they're all not going to go up in a nuclear cloud.

The truth is both, really. It really is true. It really is true. I mean, obviously they're all not going to go up in a nuclear cloud, but I hope it has both of those things in it.