When I started really singing I was 17, 18 years old. I used to go around trying to be a singer in the Bronx. My knees would shake but I learned by doing.

For TV I don't think I could have gotten a better part than Uncle Junior because of the intimacy of the character based on David Chase's brilliant writing.

I don't like the way Uncle Junior dresses. He loves it.

I went to Brooklyn College and met this beautiful Jewish girl named Merle, with dark hair, exotic looking and brilliant. So we got married and had three children.

Uncle Junior is a criminal, which makes him a villain, so it makes people want to watch him. My whole life as an actor has been preparing for something like this.

My father was an American who could cuss in Italian and make an aria out of it. It was wonderful to watch. But then again, he was a Gemini. I believe in that stuff.

They would wake me up when I was sleeping, and say sing a song for our friends. I had a sweet voice, I had a nice little tenor voice. God knows what I sang, but my whole family would admire me.

The radio was my big influence. Comedy came from the instinctual feel I had for language.

I had to audition for the part of Jnior, and I wanted the role terribly because I knew it was a great character. This guy is a wonderful, funny, mean old guy.

I enjoyed my grandparents very much. My mother and father would always allow me to stay with them.

I had no idea what they were saying in Italian as a child, they spoke too quickly on the radio. But I realized that language was very funny.

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.

You're alive, Haven, but when are you going to start living?

If you love someone let them go. If they return to you it was meant to be. If they don't their love was never yours to begin with.

It's the job, I think, of leaders to try to address peoples' real legitimate concerns and channel them in the most constructive ways possible.

Live like you're already dead, man. Have a good time. Do your best. Let it all come ripping right through you.

Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.

Power is a companion it is not easy to part with, when it goes, the zest of life goes with it. With dry eyes and clenched fist, one stares after it, jealous of the next one it will single out.

Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but if Jesus Christ lived in Chicago today, and he had come to me and he had five thousand dollars, let's just say things would have turned out differently.

My books are friends that never fail me.