Jonathan Banks

“If I could ban boxing, I probably would, but I'll tell you in the same breath, I loved it growing up.”

“It's not that I don't enjoy a good mystery that comes and goes in a hour. I do, but God, 'Breaking Bad' and 'Saul' unfold like novels.”

“The funniest guy I've ever worked with - it's just one of those things, again, where we look at each other and just laugh - is Jimmy Byrnes from 'Wiseguy.' Jimmy - we can't be in the same room together. He knows he can make me laugh just by looking at me.”

“I grew up in Chillum Heights in the Washington, D.C. area., and it was never a garden spot. When guys go, 'Hey, when I grew up, my neighborhood was tough, and it was this and that'... the reality is that it was just a terribly sad place. And thank God, I was able to escape it.”

“I say this to young actors: You don't get into this because you think you're average. You get into this because you think, 'I'm good.' It's an art form, and I'm an artist. But as an artist, you know there's not a soul in the world that's going to believe in you other than yourself.”

“I grew up in Washington, D.C. Suffice to say, it was not a garden spot.”

“There's a lot of people in my family who've adopted children.”

“I think I've been cast as toughs as far as I can remember always, always.”

“'Homeland' is great.”

“From the time I could visually perceive film or TV, I was just enthralled by it. I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world.”

“I love 'Boardwalk Empire,' but there were moments where I thought it didn't have the constant through-line that 'Breaking Bad' did and 'Better Call Saul' does.”

“I was a janitor when I was 16, cleaning out garbage rooms in Washington, D.C., and they were foul. It gets really hot in D.C. in the summertime, and you then take on the essence of garbage. People would stand away from me on the sidewalk as I came toward them.”

“If you had ever told me that the finest film work was going to be done on television, I wouldn't have believed it.”

“I've got eighteen-year-old twins that need to go to college, so there's still a financial issue, but I could retire tomorrow and just count ducks by the side of the lake, and that would be just fine by me. I'm not a high-energy guy.”

“God bless my mother - she's long gone now, but she'd work all day and go to school at night. She started out in life as a housekeeper at 15 years old, totally on her own, and she retired as a college professor. But there were some hard times. It's not easy for a woman who's only trying to do the best for her kid but who could never be home.”

“Thank God for theater and film and television and my very, very, very lucky life.”

“That first episode of 'Newsroom,' the way it just cooked, I thought it was really good.”

“If you had told me in the Seventies and Eighties that TV would be as edgy or edgier than most films, and more intelligently written than most films, I wouldn't have believed it. There's great stuff out there.”

“Ed O'Neill is just a good, good human being.”

“I was a latchkey kid from the time I was 7 years old.”