David Simon Quotes

Rural America's not coming back. That idea was lost with the Industrial Revolution.

It's been said that no man is a hero to a newspaperman, and I spent too many years as an ink-stained wretch.

The drug war is a holocaust in slow motion.

The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke.

It isn't about the welfare check. It never was.
It isn't about sexual permissiveness, or personal morality, or failures in parenting, or lack of family planning. All of these are inherent in the disaster, but the purposefulness with which babies make babies in places like West Baltimore goes far beyond accident and chance, circumstance and misunderstanding. It's about more than the sexual drives of adolescents, too, though that might be hard to believe in a country where sex alone is enough of an argument to make anyone do just about anything.
In Baltimore, a city with the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, the epidemic is, at root, about human expectation, or more precisely, the absence of expectation.

Every day, human beings are worth less. That's the triumph of capitalism. The money gets made, and the fewer people we need to make that money ...

Reality is ultimately a selective act of perception and interpretation. A shift in our perception and interpretation enables us to break old habits and awaken new possibilities for balance, healing, and transformation.

[Y]ou are ... entrusted with the pursuit of that most extraordinary of crimes: the theft of a human life. You speak for the dead. You avenge those lost to the world.

When we spend time in silence, we can hear the voice of our soul whispering its sacred message and encouraging us to make choices that bring us more happiness, health, love, meaning, and peace.

I've never met anyone with a perfect upbringing. It seems to me that life on planet Earth just doesn't work that way. The basic challenges of getting our needs met and managing boundaries are inherent in growing up human.

It's good to be good, but it's better to be lucky.

Only the human heart can live in present moment awareness. The human mind cannot, because its essential nature is to ponder the past and plan the future. This is why all wise beings encourage us to go beyond the mind into the timeless, boundless transcendence of heart-centered awareness.

For a detective or street police, the only real satisfaction is the work itself; when a cop spends more and more time getting aggravated with the details, he's finished. The attitude of co-workers, the indifference of superiors, the poor quality of the equipment - all of it pales if you still love the job; all of it matters if you don't.

African American music can't happen in Germany or in Italy or in Mumbai. If America disappeared off the face of the Earth today, the greatest single cultural loss would be blues, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, rock-and-roll.

We are innately creative beings capable of writing a love story worth living, and we cannot afford to miss out on the opportunity to experience nourishing relationships.

It is not a look of horror, consternation, or even distress. More often than not, the last visage of a murdered man resembles that of a flustered schoolchild to whom the logic of a simple equation has just been revealed.

Healing is the process of reestablishing the integration between body, mind, and spirit, creating opportunities for the return of the memory of wholeness.

The three-story derelict is home to Smitty, Gale, and Gale's baby - a nuclear family nested on the corner - and Ella is accustomed to seeing them on the front steps, waiting for redemption or a cool breeze from the harbor, neither of which seems particularly likely.

Everyone lies. Murderers lie because they have to; witnesses and other participants lie because they think they have to; everyone else lies for the sheer joy of it, and to uphold a general principle that under no circumstances do you provide accurate information to a cop.

All stress is ultimately related to loss or the fear of loss.

It is the unrepentant worship of statistics that forms the true orthodoxy of any modern police department.

What drugs haven't destroyed, the war against them has

If a drug dealer falls in West Baltimore and no one is there to hear him, does he make a sound?

If I had to guess and put a name on it, I'd say that at some point, the drug war was as much a function of class and social control as it was of racism.

On a practical level I'm a TV producer and storyteller who's gone about as long as you can go without achieving a mass audience.

Baltimore's often called the most northern Southern town. It has a distinct essence. It's definitely post-industrial, definitely Rust Belt, very working-class. I grew up outside of Washington, and I felt I was moving to a completely different place when I moved 30 miles north out of college.

A heavily armed nation prone to violence finds it only reasonable to give law officers weapons and the authority to use them. In the United States, only a cop has the right to kill as an act of personal deliberation and action. To

Awakening to who we really are is at the heart of yoga ... Yoga offers a path to this underlying field of being, which is the source of creativity, fulfillment, and abundance.

I'm making a lot of money. I should be paying a lot more taxes. I'm not paying taxes at a rate that is even close to what people were paying under Eisenhower. Do people think America wasn't ascendant and wasn't an upwardly mobile society under Eisenhower in the '50s? Nobody was looking at the country then and thinking to themselves, "We're taxing ourselves into oblivion." Yet there isn't a politician with balls enough to tell that truth because the whole system has been muddied by the rich. It's been purchased.

(sergeant thinking about an excellent detective who's threatening to quit)
For a squad sergeant, having Worden working for you was like having sex: When it was good it was great and even when it wasn't so hot, it was still pretty damn good.

It is your birthright to live a life abundant in love. Make the commitment today to open your heart and let your love flow.

There should be no surprise when you come to that hideous moment for which you've spent a lifetime preparing.

We have treated television as if it is not a mass medium, and we have been rewarded in kind.

There are a couple of ideas for features that I would love to do. They happen to be comedies.

Blue jeans have gone around the world. But that's a product. We market blue jeans better, just as we market film better. But you can't tell me that if America didn't exist, the culture of movies wouldn't exist. It's not a distinctly American art form.

Eventually, someone is going to pick up a brick.

What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.

Choices are much more practical and small when you're dealing with a real story. It's about execution, it's not about content.

Those ... who insist that there are some moral limits that they will not violate, are forever surprising themselves.

Genuine inner freedom is the ultimate aim of life. It is the unspoken goal of every thought you have and every action you take.

West Baltimore. You sit on your stoop, you drink Colt 45 from a brown paper bag and you watch the radio car roll slowly around the corner. You see the gunman, you hear the shots, you gather on the far corner to watch the paramedics load what remains of a police officer into the rear of an ambulance. Then you go back to your rowhouse, open another can, and settle in front of the television to watch the replay on the eleven o'clock news. Then you go back to the stoop.

Most of TV works this way: You try to get something up and running, and once you do, you just try to keep it going, because there's a lot of money involved.

Eating a meal with full awareness can be a powerful, enlightening, and healing experience.

I don't consider myself to be a crusader of any sort. I was bystander to a certain number of newspaper crusades. They end badly, in terms of being either fraudulent or by inspiring legislations that makes things worse. So, I regard myself as someone coming to the campfire with the truest possible narrative he can acquire.

What drugs have not destroyed, the war on them has

Health is a return to our memory of wholeness.

You have the capacity to change the plot line of your life, even if you've been acting from the same script since before you can remember. No matter what has happened up to this point, you have the right and the capacity to be happy. You are an innately creative being, capable of writing a love story worth living.

The Audacity of Despair
"You can stand your ground if you're white, and you can use a gun to do it. But if you stand your ground with your fists and you're black, you're dead.

"In the state of Florida, the season on African-Americans now runs year round. Come one, come all. And bring a handgun. The legislators are fine with this blood on their hands. The governor, too. One man accosted another and when it became a fist fight, one man - and one man only - had a firearm. The rest is racial rationalization and dishonorable commentary.

"If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence - these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve. I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own.

"Behold, the lewd, pornographic embrace of two great American pathologies: Race and guns, both of which have conspired not only to take the life of a teenager, but to make that killing entirely permissible. I can't look an African-American parent in the eye for thinking about what they must tell their sons about what can happen to them on the streets of their country. Tonight, anyone who truly understands what justice is and what it requires of a society is ashamed to call himself an American.

The best # gift we can give in any interaction is to leave people feeling lighter, # happier , and more at # peace .

Any music can be healing if it inspires, relaxes, encourages or creates enthusiasm for life in you.

Boiled down to its core, the truth is always a simple, solid thing

I encourage you from the depths of my heart and being to know that you have the full capacity and the right to make changes that will enliven your awareness, raise the succulent joy in your heart, and experience the vitality that comes from living in balance.

We have no sense of the collective anymore in America. The response to Katrina was proof positive of that.

We didn't create the culture of film. We certainly market it better than anyone in the world, but film could have happened anywhere. It's not distinctly American, as witnessed by the fact that there are film communities throughout the world that tell stories to their own cultural liking.

McLarney laughs, then leaps into the parable of Snot Boogie, who joined the neighborhood crap game, waited for the pot to thicken, then grabbed the cash and bolted down the street only to be shot dead by one of the irate players.
"So we're interviewing the witnesses down at the office and they're saying how Snot Boogie would always join the crap game, then run away with the pot, and that they'd finally gotten sick of it ... "
Dave Brown drives in silence, barely tracking this historical digression.
"And I asked one of them, you know, I asked him why they even let Snot Boogie into the game if he always tried to run away with the money."
McLarney pauses for effect.
"And?" asks Brown.
"He just looked at me real bizarre," says McLarney. "And then he says, 'you gotta let him play ... This is America

There came this point where I sat down with all my notebooks and I had to start to write, when I thought: this whole notion of writing for the person who understands nothing, the average reader ... He has to die! I can't have him in my head. And so the person I started writing for was the homicide detective.

It is your birthright to have a life of meaning and purpose. Whether or not the people in your life have consistently celebrated your incarnation, you deserve to celebrate your existence.

To be told you've won a MacArthur fellowship is very flattering and gratifying personally.

You believe a little shithead like this is able to stay on the run for so long?" McLarney declares, returning from yet another unsuccessful turn-up of a Milligan hideout. "You shoot a guy, hey," the sergeant adds with a shrug. "You shoot another guy - well, okay, this is Baltimore. You shoot three guys, it's time to admit you have a problem.

In the wake of Katrina, what you're witnessing and what we are very careful to depict is a form of patriotism.

You can't make a good show based on pure verisimilitude, pure anti-drama. But you have to acknowledge a lot of ordinary life. Most TV doesn't do that.

Albert Camus, a great humanist and existentialist voice, pointed out that to commit to a just cause with no hope of success is absurd. But then, he also noted that not committing to a just cause is equally absurd. But only one choice offers the possibility for dignity. And dignity matters. Dignity matters.

It seems that in Baltimore, one of the most violent cities in America, jurors are far more reluctant to convict criminal defendants than in the suburban enclaves that ring the city.

Awakening into love is a lifelong path.

Healing from our past is an essential aspect of expanding our sense of self and awakening our capacity to love. This shift often manifests as a change in the questions we've been asking ourselves. Instead of What do I need? we ask, How can I serve? Instead of What am I getting out of this? we start to ask, What can I bring to this situation to promote the highest possible outcome for everyone involved?

While I think storytelling is a meaningful way to spend your life ... it does feel a little bit secondary or off-point.

There are two Americas - separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms. In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day. In the other, human beings no longer necessary to our economy, to our society, are being devalued and destroyed.

The beauty of love is that in giving it away, you are left with more than you had before.

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound.

It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us.

Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinka

The board reveals all: Upon its acetate is writ the story of past and present. Who

Unless you loosen the hold that your past has on you, your future will unfold in much the same way ... it is time to begin writing a new script that accurately reflects the beautiful, powerful, and worthy being you are.