Nicholas Pileggi Quotes

Jacare is a gangster. He's been in the game for a long time.

And Alpo ordered guys to slaughter guys, and the whole Harlem was in tears when Rich Porter died.

Some of my friends became gangsters. You became a gangster depending upon how fast you wanted a suit. Gangsters weren't the stereotypes you see in the movies. I knew the real ones, and the real ones were out for big money.

I knew so many gangsters, and I call on that experience with them for characters.

There are many people who think I'm actually a gangster or a mafioso, largely because of 'Goodfella.'

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

I think we have always had a fascination for gangs and gangsters, and I think we always will.

A handbook for gangsters.

If you look at 'The Sopranos,' there's this notion of a criminal element on its last legs.

Basically, the last 30 minutes of 'Goodfellas,' that was my neighborhood... literally. There were people on my street who did nothing but just wash their car all day and wait for a package, and that's what I thought being an adult was.

My dad wasn't a gangster, and he wasn't a criminal, but he sure liked to rub padded shoulders with them.

The Chicago mobs... They practiced their own perverted form of "survival of the fittest." Where the strong clawed their way to the top of a criminal empire. And the weak died in a hail of machine gun bullets.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.

Props is a true thug's wife.

Where I grew up, in New Jersey, there was a lot of organised crime activity. It was a part of life.

We had an apartment on west side of Central Park. The rent was very reasonable. We found out later that it belonged to a gangster called Legs Diamond and it was a front to his headquarters. It was fine.

Wherever there's opportunity, the mafia will be there.

I had the advantage of reading the book, and when the script was first submitted to me, it was just another gangster story - the east side taking over the west side and all that.

I'm not a gangster, bro.

I reread Mesrine's book every year because the way the story is told is fascinating. Today, we don't have gangsters like Mesrine - he had humor.

When I was 16 I'd watch 'The Godfather,' but I didn't think, 'Right, I'm going to go down the barber's and get some protection money off him.'

Some of your worst gangsters are guys who were very low-key.

I don't think there's much a person could say about me. My gangster's never been on trial.

You look at the descriptions of Whitey by law enforcement during his early years, and they sum him up pretty well. He was the same guy 40 years later; he just had $40 million more, and had committed 40 more murders.

I know nothing of what it is to be a gangster.