Kurt Sutter

“My wife, Katey Sagal, has transformed herself from a sitcom cartoon to a dramatic powerhouse.”

“'Sons' was about working class white guys. And even though I didn't grow up in a motorcycle club, I grew up in a working-class, white-guy neighborhood.”

“I do not write political shows; I should not write political shows.”

“All the people who follow me on Twitter know my sense of humor. I sometimes forget the blogosphere will give it more weight than I intended.”

“The trap in Hamlet is he's the most passive of Shakespeare's characters. He's not a Richard III, not out there taking a lot of action. It's a lot of asides and soliloquies where he's wrapped in angst, and that's not a very interesting character.”

“I know the book on me is I'm bombastic and over-the-top, but I think people who know me know that's a part of who I am, but it's not who I am.”

“I navigate through the world with the excitement and determination of a child. That's why I'm an artist. I'd die without an outlet for expression. Unfortunately, more often than not, that childlike energy is the maturity level I bring to many circumstances.”

“By the time I was a teenager, I weighed 400 pounds.”

“I'm a storyteller... I haves a God-given gift that I can share with you and perhaps entertain you and bring you along for the ride... So when anybody tries to take that away from me, or impede that, I get defensive.”

“I've learned in most areas of my life, to bounce heated choices off other people. Co-workers, my agent, my wife, a sponsor, etc. A majority of the time, that keeps me on the right side of things.”

“I joke that I learned the essentials of storytelling from Hanna-Barbera, but I pretty much did. That kind of television is what enamored me as a kid, and that's what really got me hooked. You could say that's where it all began.”

“I wish I had tougher skin, but I don't.”

“I don't read a lot of fiction, but one of my favorite authors is William Kennedy; his books, to me, almost read like historical dramas because the mythologies are so detailed as he wove fiction with the factual history of Albany.”

“Here's the deal with 'Bastard.' I loved that show, and for me, it was such a palate cleanser, going from writing urban vernacular and crime to, essentially, iambic pentameter. I loved the mythology of that world based on history, but what it came down to was money.”

“You have to be driven by something greater than you, where you don't surrender, and you commit to something like that.”

“Never in the history of 'The Shield' was the word 'LAPD' ever mentioned. We would mention districts, like Wilshire and Hollenbeck and Marina, but Farmington was a fictitious district, and we never actually uttered the word 'LAPD.' So that was sort of the deal we made with them.”

“Actors always feel more comfortable when there's an actor directing, in terms of vocabulary and breaking down a scene.”

“My dad was disappointed in me because I was obese, and he was a sports guy. As a result, I spent a lot of time in that basement. I could go down there and escape and be whatever I wanted to be. I had a huge fantasy life. It always involved vengeance.”

“I was really exposed to great old-time literature - the classics, the poetic realists like Strindberg and Ibsen and all those guys. I was really inspired by all those guys. That's when writing became a primary focus.”

“The stuff that I learned on 'Sons,' the education of how to tell stories, was part of that mythology. It's hard to look at it and go, 'Oh, if I knew this, I would have done it this way,' because the fact is I like to think that all that sort of unraveled as it was supposed to.”