Michael Imperioli

“I would never put on a Mets hat. Only if I was playing a Met as part of the job. Which, actually, I did a long time ago.”

“I do smoke in real life. A lot. We're all smoking right now in fact.”

“It doesn't really matter to me how people see me.”

“One of my early money mistakes was getting fired from the first acting job I ever had. I was cast in a play as the lead, and I got fired three nights after the open.”

“John Ventimiglia, who was on 'The Sopranos,' was in my first acting class and we have been friends since that time. Alec Baldwin was in my class back then, Sean Young and Andrew McCarthy.”

“I think people always thought I was more of a Guido than I am.”

“My family is my life, and everything else comes second as far as what's important to me.”

“I don't know if I would have had the same career had I not done 'GoodFellas.' Probably not. Would I have been cast on 'The Sopranos?' Who knows if there would have been a 'Sopranos?'”

“When you get made into the Mafia, they cut, prick your finger. And they take the blood and put it on the picture of a saint. Then they burn it. That's the Mafia induction ceremony.”

“I love fiction and read novels constantly.”

“My goal as an actor was just to be somebody very human. I'm not really interested in playing a character who is particularly cool and everything he does looks great and turns out great.”

“'Detroit 1-8-7' - the numbers are police slang for murder - is filmed in that blue-collar Michigan city, providing a flavor of authenticity. Detroit offers a unique visual landscape that tells the story of the city and what it's been through.”

“'Pitchfork' said something like, 'Michael Imperioli wrote a book that sounds like Lou Reed fan fiction,' which maybe it is. It's fiction, and I'm a fan. But it's not about me, and it's not a Lou Reed book.”

“There's an intelligence that goes with being a good cop. Intuitiveness - they have to be actors; they have to have deductive reasoning, knowledge about a great deal of subjects.”

“I like working with people I know and feel a kinship to.”

“I didn't start making a real living until eight or nine years in. Even after 'Goodfellas' came out, I was still working as a waiter, and people would recognize me - that was an odd experience. But when 'The Sopranos' hit, that was like an exponential leap.”

“I have a background writing screenplays and teleplays. I've tried to write prose and fiction but never really completed anything I thought worthy of publication or worthy of anyone else to even look at.”

“At one point, I got to work as an assistant for Martin Scorsese: He wanted to know about all the films coming out, so I would make clippings and put it all in a big scrapbook for him. I was also in charge of his video library - it was like a little video store, and his friends and colleagues would come and borrow films.”

“Detroit is a city that really stands out. It's been through a very difficult time. There's been a lot of pain here, and the city, physically, has suffered. You can see it in certain neighborhoods, and there's buildings downtown that have been abandoned.”

“When I read the pilot of 'The Sopranos,' I wasn't terribly blown away by it.”