Personally, I think the better they killed you, the better it was. Like Joey Pants went out with the head [in a fistfight]. Michael had a good one [by suffocation]. Mine was fantastic [shot looking at train sets]. But i think if they let you go with a whimper it was a bad joke, instead of, you know, 'Hey, we're going to give you a good fucking send-off'.

If it's time for your character to go, it's time for your character to go - you know what I mean? That's it. It doesn't matter who you are. [David Chase] made that statement when he killed off Big Pussy. This was a major character that just got killed. I mean, this wasn't 'Friends'. This was a real worry. You know, we would talk. 'Did you hear anything?' You're asking the writers. Nobody's telling you nothing. Each time the script arrived, you go to the front, you go to the back, looking.

[on being cast as Bobby 'Bacala' Baccalieri in 'The Sopranos'] I had been working as an entertainment director at the Riviera in Las Vegas. When I got the script, I remember reading it going, Wait a minute. I mean, Tony's calling me a 'a calzone with legs', and 'Consider the salads, you fat fuck'. And I'm not much bigger than him. So at first I thought, Maybe they cast the wrong guy. And then they had me come in a day or two early and they fitted me for a fat suit. And for the first two seasons I was in a fat suit. And then I guess, in Season Four, David [Chase] thought I was fat enough on my own, so he let me get rid of it.