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.

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 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.

The end of this life is not the end of life.

A Grace connected creating the World of life, and the world of the dead in pathways of magic.

What I’ve learnt is: buy the damn shoes. Kiss the boy. You can lose a life in indecision, and regret is a waste of an emotion.

History does not eliminate grievances. It lays them down like landmines.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

To truly be feminine means being soft, receptive, and - look out, here it comes - submissive.

If one discards the Bible as being unreliable, then he must discard almost all literature of antiquity.

It's never too early to panic.

I haven't aged into a character actor. I'm an old leading man.

It is not enough to be exceptionally mad, licentious and fanatical in order to win a great reputation; it is still necessary to arrive on the scene at the right time.