I went on tour in the play H.M.S. Pinafore.

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.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

Meditation is to be aware of what is going on: in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world.

In vino Veritas. (In wine there is truth.)

Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.

Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable.

I didn't go to Harvard or Princeton, but I can count - the defunding box canyon is a tactic that will fail and weaken our position.

Hi. My name is Debby, and I am a storyteller. I don't think of myself as an actress. I am more like a face that takes words on a page, and puts them in front of your eyes.

Coincidence is a spiritual pun.

I'm starved for love. Not ordinary love but real love. The love that's like music or something.

It’s interesting how you can know someone for a long time, and then one day you just see them in this whole different way.