Gangster Culture Quotes

Some music comes from a real place; some music comes from your imagination. It's difficult to find out what's real and what's not, especially with the gangster stuff.

Dancing in speakeasies was a job, and none of us knew for sure who were gangsters. No one told us, so how could we know? My mother used to come and take me home. We thought nothing of walking home together at two in the morning.

We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.

The old G's, or the gangsters, turned me away from the street because they knew my dad, and they had a lot of respect for my dad, but because I was an athlete.

In my world, of course, it don't matter. You could be a gangster with a dress, you could be a gangster with baggy pants.

The Italian gangster thing has become a form of the modern-day Western.

I've never seen a Western that was really truthful. Most are just morality plays. Good guys and bad guys - and the good guys always win, whereas in reality, most of the sheriffs were as bad as the gangsters they were after.

As a teen-ager I played cards, shot craps, played pool, went to the track, hung around social clubs. I knew that some card and crap games were run by the mob, and some social clubs were mob social clubs. Even as a kid I knew guys that were here today, gone tomorrow, never seen again, and I knew what had happened.

America is a nation of 270 million people: 100 million of them are gangsters, another 100 million are hustlers, 50 million are complete lunatics, and every single one of us is secretly in show business. Isn't that fabulous?

Props is a true thug's wife.

How did we suddenly become entranced with gangster culture? I saw it this morning on campus. When did the black community say we should all look like criminals?

We did not get any money from the early records. It was all taken by crooked managers. It is just a gangster's paradise.

If being a gangster were a prerequisite to being a musician, there'd be a lot less cello music, for example.

Pop music is great, but there's a lot of BS about the attitude of guys being super-gangster - that's why the whole thing is silly. It's making fun of itself. That self-awareness is why people enjoy it. It's refreshing.

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

It's funny how the ruthless, murderous gangster has really been romanticized by the media. I mean, I grew up watching the 'Godfathers' and 'Scarface,' and they were the coolest. They're just really interesting stories with great characters. They're rock stars.

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

Your main contribution is spray painting your nickname on other people's things. And my cousin, who's a 'gangster', he's like, 'No, Tash, you don't understand; you throw a fat piece up there, that piece is yours.' I'm like, 'No one thinks you own Costco.'

Everybody who is anyone wanted to meet a real life gangster, and here's Joey Gallo hitting the scene. What more could you want with a gangster? He looked the part. They call it gangster chic. He dressed like the 'Reservoir Dogs' - black suit, white shirt, skinny black tie. You know, he had the whole look down. And the big shades, of course.

I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.'

Hip-hop is not about crime. Hip-hop is not about being a gangster.

Terre Haute. They used to call it 'Terrible Hut' because it was so wide open. Gambling, red light district, speak-easies. I entertained for all the gangsters. Can't name a gangster that didn't come into the place where I worked.

Jay-Z is a hero, Sam Walton is a hero - these are not exactly communitarian champions. These are - in some cases, literally; in others, just figuratively - gangster heroes. That's who is worshipped: people who get away with it.

'The Sopranos' gets praised as novelistic, but it follows the most banal of life patterns, showing the sheer tedium of being a mobster. It has dead spots, boring plotlines, weak episodes. Characters develop slowly, or don't. Like viewers, a gangster might get bored, fade out of the action, then come back to find none of his debts forgotten.

I originally got my name after a gun because the way I rap; a gangster gave me the name in 1988.