I must have been a really tough kid to corral. I got disciplined quite frequently. I guess that would be the best way to say it. The rod, I wore out the rod. You know, Spare the rod and spoil the child? Well, I wore out the rod.
New York is hard, cynical, ruthless, even beyond other cities. From their early repression its children emerge sophisticated, both stunted and overdeveloped, perverted, premature, forced by the artificiality of their environment.
I was a street-guy villain. I was a street-corner villain. I was an illiterate villain. All rough edges.
I grew up in an environment where it was permittable to use violence to solve a problem. But it was not permittable ever to call the police under any circumstances. That was the kind of doctrine of my household. My dad was a career-long criminal, and you weren't calling the police for any reason.
My dad was raised hard. His own dad's mentality was, 'If you're not dead, you can work. If you're not dead, you're all right.'
My past is not pleasant; I grew up in a very tough town, Waterbury, Connecticut. I grew up in New York, too, but Waterbury was tougher.
He looks as though he's been weaned on a pickle.
The family I grew up in was very inflexible and harsh. It left me with the feeling that if you do let somebody down badly, then even if they tell you it's all right, it cannot be all right.
My brother was probably one of the toughest kids from my neighborhood and he didn't make it easy on me. He made sure I was getting beat up as much as possible growing up. If he wasn't beating me up, he was making his friends beat me up.
