Quotes from Jonathan Banks

Boy I could do this forever; I truly enjoy bad guys.

If you had told me in the Seventies and Eighties that TV would be as edgy or edgier than most films, and more intelligently written than most films, I wouldn't have believed it. There's great stuff out there.

Forty-five years since I made my first paycheck, and I'm telling you that 'Breaking Bad' is as good as it gets.

It really bothers me that Stephen Cannell has died. I had lunch with him about eight months before he died, and... I really liked him. I really did.

I was a janitor when I was 16, cleaning out garbage rooms in Washington, D.C., and they were foul. It gets really hot in D.C. in the summertime, and you then take on the essence of garbage. People would stand away from me on the sidewalk as I came toward them.

I grew up in Chillum Heights in the Washington, D.C. area., and it was never a garden spot. When guys go, 'Hey, when I grew up, my neighborhood was tough, and it was this and that'... the reality is that it was just a terribly sad place. And thank God, I was able to escape it.

I grew up in Washington, D.C. Suffice to say, it was not a garden spot.

I probably carry a fair amount of sarcasm in my daily life.

You can never know your lines well enough, and you better listen.

God bless my mother - she's long gone now, but she'd work all day and go to school at night. She started out in life as a housekeeper at 15 years old, totally on her own, and she retired as a college professor. But there were some hard times. It's not easy for a woman who's only trying to do the best for her kid but who could never be home.

If you had ever told me that the finest film work was going to be done on television, I wouldn't have believed it.

Never equate yourself with whatever success may be and how fleeting that is. The only thing you can do every day is become a better actor. That's the only thing I have control over.

Thank God for theater and film and television and my very, very, very lucky life.

From the time I could visually perceive film or TV, I was just enthralled by it. I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world.

I've died so many times. I'm 65. On my 40th birthday, my girlfriend gave me a reel with ways I had died, whether it was by knife, or electrocution or drowning or being thrown off a building or whatever it might have been. I've died a lot of times!

Comedy is not my world. It's difficult for me, but sometimes you just have to go with it and have a good time.

I love Russell Crowe's line to Oliver Reed in 'Gladiator' where he asks him, 'Are you in danger of becoming a good man?' It's one of my favorite lines ever.

I've played a lot of bad guys over the years, a lot of hardcore guys. At the same time, I've done a lot of comedy.

'Wiseguy' for its time was good. It was really good. And it holds up still. But a lot of the restraints have been taken off now.

If I had my way, we'd rehearse things to death.

'Homeland' is great.

I honestly do feel - and I hope I don't gag anybody if they read this - but I feel like I'm one of the luckiest people in the world.

Ed O'Neill is just a good, good human being.

If I could ban boxing, I probably would, but I'll tell you in the same breath, I loved it growing up.