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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.

-David Simon

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When We Were Kids

David Simon

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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.

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How That Happened - How The Money And The Power Arrayed Itself And Who Got The Share In That, Who Got Cut Out, Who Was Exploited And Who Did The Exploiting - That To Me Is A Story Of The Deuce That's More About Almost The America That We Inhabit Today, More Than Just Merely About Pornography Or Prostitution.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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

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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

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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.

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.

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.

Pornography Has Become Rationalized. It's Become Much More Coherent And Profitable.

The Trick To Making A Story Matter Is That Every Now And Then, Somebody You Care About Has To Go. If It's Somebody That You Don't Care About, Then It Doesn't Really Have - The Stakes Aren't There. But If You Do That Every Now And Then, Then The Story Matters To People. And There Are Actual Stakes Involved, Emotional Stakes.

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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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Eventually, Someone Is Going To Pick Up A Brick.

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Enthusiasm For Life

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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.

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

I'd Love If People Relearned The Lessons Of The 20th Century All Over Again. Which Is To Say This Country Progressed Economically And Socially When We Had A Better Balance Between Capital And Labor. Neither Capital Or Labor Won Every Argument. The Battle Between The Two Created Economic Tension, And Transformed The Working Class Into The Middle Class, And Grew The Economy.

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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.

Authenticity Is An Alignment Between Your Beliefs, Your Desires And Your Choices In The World. Desires Change Throughout The Course Of A Life, But Agreement Between Ideals, Aspirations And Deeds Is Key To A Life Of Peace, Happiness And Success.

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.

I Had A Great Editor, Rebecca Corbett, From The Time I Was A City Reporter Right Through To The Years I Worked On The 'sun's' Enterprise Reporting Team.

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

Tv Writers Live Life Of Well-paid, Specialty Prostitutes. We Have A Very Special Skill Set And We Occupy One Of The Higher Floors In The Bordello That Is Writing. We Do A Very Particular Job For A Very Select Clientele.

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.

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.

Life Is Too Short To Carry The Burden Of A Heavy Heart. It Does Not Serve You Or Anyone Else. Free Yourself Through The Power Of Forgiveness And Compassion.

Life Is Too Short

With More Than 80 Percent Of Americans Living In Metropolitan Areas, There Are Still Demagogues Who Want To Run Down The Idea Of Multiculturalism, Of Urbanity, Being The Only Future We Have. We Either Live Or Die Based On How We Live In Cities, And Our Society Is Either Going To Be Great Or Not Based On How We Perform As Creatures Of The City.

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.

Since The Donald Trump Election, Which Has Involved This Administration Making Direct Attacks On Press Freedoms, You're Actually Seeing A Certain Amount Of Rallying And Reinvigoration By The National Press In Terms Of Covering National Issues And The Presidency. The Washington Post And The New York Times, Mother Jones, Propublica And A Lot Of Other Places, They've Actually Done Some Really Strong Work When Confronted With This Administration. But The Resources That You Used To Have At State And Local Level Aren't There Anymore.

To Be Told You've Won A Macarthur Fellowship Is Very Flattering And Gratifying Personally.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Authenticity Is An Alignment Between Your Beliefs, Your Desires And Your Choices In The World. Desires That Are In Alignment With Core Beliefs Generate Powerful Actions. Like A Wave That Draws From The Depths Of The Ocean, Actions Connected To Your Authentic Self Are More Likely To Manifest Your Intentions.

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.

The Best #‎ Gift We Can Give In Any Interaction Is To Leave People Feeling Lighter, #‎ Happier , And More At #‎ Peace .

Eating A Meal With Full Awareness Can Be A Powerful, Enlightening, And Healing Experience.

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

Nobody Reads Anymore In America. Reading Has Become The Least Effective Delivery System For Narrative. That's Sad Because Prose Is The Means By Which You Can Deliver Very Complicated, Nuanced Explanations Of Problems And Possible Solutions.

We're Now Seeing Levels Of Inequality Raise Their Heads That We Haven't Seen Since The Age Of The Robber Barons. If Somebody Watched The Deuce, And Understood The Allegory About Capital And Labor, And Understands What Happens When One Side Is Vulnerable To The Other, That Would Be Swell.

Healing Is The Process Of Reestablishing The Integration Between Body, Mind, And Spirit, Creating Opportunities For The Return Of The Memory Of Wholeness.

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.

Rural America's Not Coming Back. That Idea Was Lost With The Industrial Revolution. And Yet With More Than 80 Percent Of Americans Living In Metropolitan Areas, There Are Still Demagogues Who Want To Run Down The Idea Of Multiculturalism, Of Urbanity, Being The Only Future We Have. We Either Live Or Die Based On How We Live In Cities, And Our Society Is Either Going To Be Great Or Not Based On How We Perform As Creatures Of The City.

There Are A Couple Of Ideas For Features That I Would Love To Do. They Happen To Be Comedies.

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.

The Murder Clearance Rate Now In My City Baltimore Is Almost Non-existent. Nobody Can Solve A Murder, Nobody Can Do Any Actual Police Work, Because They've Learned How To Do Bad Police Work, Chase Drugs. Fighting Vice, While Being Unable To Respond To Sin. Generations Of Cops Have Learned How Not To Police Work By Policing The Drug War. Not Only Are They Police Brutal, They're Ineffective. Baltimore Is More Violent Than It Has Ever Been In Modern History.

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.

Choices Are Much More Practical And Small When You're Dealing With A Real Story. It's About Execution, It's Not About Content.

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.

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.

It's Been Said That No Man Is A Hero To A Newspaperman, And I Spent Too Many Years As An Ink-stained Wretch.

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.

What Drugs Have Not Destroyed, The War On Them Has

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.

Health Is A Return To Our Memory Of Wholeness.

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