excerpted from: Eulogy for James Gandolfini, David Chase

"I went to meet you on the banks of the Hudson River, and you told me, you said, 'You know what I want to be? I want to be a man. That's all. I want to be a man.' Now, this is so odd, because you are such a man. You're a man in many ways many males, including myself, wish they could be a man.

"The paradox about you as a man is that I always felt personally, that with you, I was seeing a young boy. A boy about Michael's age right now. 'Cause you were very boyish. And about the age when humankind, and life on the planet are really opening up and putting on a show, really revealing themselves in all their beautiful and horrible glory. And I saw you as a boy — as a sad boy, amazed and confused and loving and amazed by all that. And that was all in your eyes. And that was why, I think, you were a great actor: because of that boy who was inside. He was a child reacting. Of course you were intelligent, but it was a child reacting, and your reactions were often childish. And by that, I mean they were pre-school, they were pre-manners, they were pre-intellect. They were just simple emotions, straight and pure. And I think your talent is that you can take in the immensity of humankind and the universe, and shine it out to the rest of us like a huge bright light. And I believe that only a pure soul, like a child, can do that really well. And that was you."

 ~  "James Gandolfini eulogized by 'Sopranos' creator David Chase and friends and family"