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Doesn't Matter If You're Fourteen Or If You're Eight, There's An Incredible Vernacular That I Do Believe Has Become More And More Plausible To Talk This Way In The Public Sphere, I Think Because We Live In Such A Coarse And Pornographic Era. Years Of This Has Produced A Certain Amount Of Misogyny That Is Just A Given Of Life In America At This Point.

-David Simon

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Doesn't Matter If You're

David Simon

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Doesn't Matter If You're Fourteen Or If You're Eight, There's An Incredible Vernacular That I Do Believe Has Become More And More Plausible To Talk This Way In The Public Sphere, I Think Because We Live In Such A Coarse And Pornographic Era. Years Of This Has Produced A Certain Amount Of Misogyny That Is Just A Given Of Life In America At This Point.

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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.

Sex Work Is A Completely Unregulated Industry And To Make The Affront Even Worse, The Product And The Labourers Are The Same Thing! The Product Is The Sexuality Of The Actual Labourers: Flesh. I Think In That Sense, The Exploitative Nature Of Unencumbered Capitalism Is Made Even More Dramatic.

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I'm Just A Swell Guy. No, That's A Ridiculous Notion - If You're Being An Asshole To People, You're Being An Asshole, That's All There Is To It. It Can't Be Rationalized Because You Wrote Something Worthwhile. First Obligation Is To Other People.

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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.

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I Think What You've Seen From Donald Trump Is This Whole Election Cycle, There's Been A Level Of Misogyny That Has Become Certain And Fixed.

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You Shoot Another Guy—well, Okay, This Is Baltimore. You Shoot Three Guys, It’s Time To Admit You Have A Problem.

I Always Tell Lawrence Gilliard Jr. He Never Got A Decent Bite Of The Apple, So I Was Happy We Had A Role That Seemed Perfect For Him. I Like The Idea Of Him As One Of The Few Moral Centres Of The Wire Show.

Transitions Are A Part Of Life, Allowing For Perpetual Renewal. When You Experience The End Of One Chapter, Allow Yourself To Feel The Emotions Of Loss And Rebirth. A Bud Gives Way To A New Flower, Which Surrenders To The Fruit, Which Gives Rise To A Seed, Which Yields A New Sprout. Even As You Ride The Roller Coaster, Embrace The Centered Internal Reference Of The Ever-present Witness.

When We Were Kids Coming Up, If You Stole Your Dad's Playboy Magazine, That Was About As Much Of An Education As You Were Gonna Get. You Finish Looking At The Centrefold And You Read 'the Playboy Adviser' That Told You About What Stereo To Buy And Something About Sex Which You Didn't Quite Understand, And You Were Still Just As Confused. Now If You're Ten The Entire World Of Human Sexuality, And A Very Misogynistic Version Of That, Is Available To You On A Laptop After A Couple Of Key Strokes. I Think It's Changed The Vernacular In The Way Men Address Women.

You Have The Capacity To Change The Plotline Of Your Life, Even If You've Been Acting From The Same Script Since Before You Can Remember.

Not Only Did This New Pornography Industry Change The Way Men Look At Women And How We Relate To Sex, How We Sell Stuff, And Not Only Did It Change America's Cultural Landscape - It's Also This Incredible Metaphor For A Market-based Economy. The Great Pyramid Scheme That America Has Become. I Felt Like In Were Larger Themes In Terms Of Culture And Economics That Could Be Addressed.

What We Were Trying To Do Was Take The Notion Of Greek Tragedy, Of Fated And Doomed People, And Instead Of These Olympian Gods, Indifferent, Venal, Selfish, Hurling Lightning Bolts And Hitting People In The Ass For No Reason — Instead Of Those Guys Whipping It On Oedipus Or Achilles, It’s The Postmodern Institutions . . . Those Are The Indifferent Gods.

What We've Learned From The Whole Election Cycle Of 2016 President Elections Is Men And Women, Men Particularly, Are Pretty Comfortable Talking About Women In Terms That - I Think It's Hard For Me To Not Believe This Has Been Influenced By Fifty Years Of Open Pornography And That Kind Of Culture.

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Doesn't Matter If You're Fourteen Or If You're Eight, There's An Incredible Vernacular That I Do Believe Has Become More And More Plausible To Talk This Way In The Public Sphere, I Think Because We Live In Such A Coarse And Pornographic Era. Years Of This Has Produced A Certain Amount Of Misogyny That Is Just A Given Of Life In America At This Point.

Meditation Is Like A Bath For The Mind; It Clears And Refreshes Our Windows Of Perception, Allowing More Light, Love, And Happiness To Flow Into Lives.

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.

In Baltimore They Can't Do Police Work To Save Their Lives. Now Because Of Freddie Gray They're Not Even Getting Out Of The Car And Policing Corners - They're On A Job Slowdown, Basically. Right Now If The Police Stopped Being Brutal, If We Got Police Shooting Under Control, And The Use Of Excessive Force, If We Have A Meaningful Societal Response To All That Stuff, And The Racism That Underlies It, The Question Still Remains: What Are They Policing, And Why?

Homicide Is The Major Leagues, The Center Ring, The Show. It Always Has Been ... It Goes Beyond Academic Degrees, Specialized Training Or Book Learning, Because All The Theory In The World Means Nothing If You Can't Read The Street.

A Tv Show Can't Hold People And Institutions To Account Like Good Journalism Can.

How Do We Allow God Into Our Minds, Bodies, Relationships, And Life? We Stop Squeezing The Divine Out Through Our Preconceived Notions Of What Is Sacred And What Is Profane. When We Assume The Mind-set That Everything Is Ultimately Divine, Though Sometimes More Disguised Than Others, Then We Can See That All Of Our Thoughts, Impulses, And Desires Arise From And Can Bring Us Back To Awareness Of The Sacred.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

America Is A Country That Is Now Utterly Divided When It Comes To Its Society, Its Economy, Its Politics. There Are Definitely Two Americas. I Live In One, On One Block In Baltimore That Is Part Of The Viable America, The America That Is Connected To Its Own Economy, Where There Is A Plausible Future For The People Born Into It.

One Of The Sad Things About Contemporary Journalism Is That It Actually Matters Very Little. The World Now Is Almost Inured To The Power Of Journalism. The Best Journalism Would Manage To Outrage People. And People Are Less And Less Inclined To Outrage.

What Drugs Haven't Destroyed, The War Against Them Has

While I Think Storytelling Is A Meaningful Way To Spend Your Life... It Does Feel A Little Bit Secondary Or Off-point.

Capitalism Is The Only Engine Credible Enough To Generate Mass Wealth. I Think It's Imperfect, But We're Stuck With It. And Thank God We Have That In The Toolbox. But If You Don't Manage It In Some Way That Incorporates All Of Society, If Everybody's Not Benefiting On Some Level And You Don't Have A Sense Of Shared Purpose, National Purpose, Then It's Just A Pyramid Scheme.

Pyramid Schemes

All Stress Is Ultimately Related To Loss Or The Fear Of Loss.

More People Pay Attention To Fiction And To Narrative Than Pay Attention To Journalism. That's Quite Sad. More People Pay Attention To Television Than To Prose. That's Equally Sad, If Not More So.

We Have No Sense Of The Collective Anymore In America. The Response To Katrina Was Proof Positive Of That.

People From Here Will Often Say, "i'm Not From The United States, I'm From New Orleans."

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.

Any Music Can Be Healing If It Inspires, Relaxes, Encourages Or Creates Enthusiasm For Life In You.

Enthusiasm For Life

Rural America's Not Coming Back. That Idea Was Lost With The Industrial Revolution.

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.

The Drug War Is A Holocaust In Slow Motion.

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.

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