I've been a good boy, I've never really been convicted of serious crime.
I don't think there's much a person could say about me. My gangster's never been on trial.
None of my peers avoided prison. None of 'em.
I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That's the interesting stuff.
I've been a biker, I've been a convict, I've been a husband, father, and son.
I don't love acting. How can you love something when you sit around 12 hours a day and work 10 minutes a day? I'm just doing it because it keeps me off the streets and out of jail.
I’ve got no criminal record.
I know someone from growing up who is in jail right now for the rest of his life, but he was one of the sweetest people I ever knew.
My dad's uncles were illegal bookmakers who were known in the area as Peaky Blinders, that's the stories I heard.
But even before that, in 1980 I went so far as to write a book about what had happened. And I wrote all about the bank robbery, I went ahead and printed it even though I had no use immunity for it.
One of my friends once saw another guy's (criminal) record and said, 'Look, this guy is a born troublemaker, just a loser.' I had to tell him, 'No, that's my record - and it doesn't include my juvenile history.'
Not after the big bust in '92, there's no big drug lifestyle anymore. I can't talk about it. Pretty ugly.
'Copper' is my first period piece. It's funny because I've been doing a lot of episodes of 'Elementary' with Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu; they keep bringing me back on the show, and so I go from being an outstanding black doctor to being a kind of hood, ex-car thief who went through rehab in 'Elementary.'
I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.
I know prisons from the inside.
My family tree consists of drug dealers, thugs, and killers.
I have tried my hand at bribery, blackmail, and deceit. And I've served time for everything, cept beggin on the street.
I was in trouble with the law from when I was real young.
Often, a serial killer has no felony record.
By the time I was 23 years old, I had multiple arrests.
For a guy who used to steal watches on the streets of Chandni Chowk for kicks, I surely think my success at the age of 22 was pretty early!
A lot of friends I went to school with were criminals.
I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write.
I think some of my darkness comes from my dad. There is definitely convict history on that side of the family, a lot of dodginess. But with the darkness can also come entrepreneurialism, genius traits.
We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business.
