David Simon
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.Collection: Sad
A little anger is a good thing if it isn't on your own behalf, if it's for others deserving of your anger, your empathy.Collection: Anger
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.
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.
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.
I would be lying if I said the journalism doesn't reflect my own choices as a reporter and a writer: what to say, what to emphasize, how to say it, what is true or untrue.
What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.
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.
To be told you've won a MacArthur fellowship is very flattering and gratifying personally.
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.
There are a couple of ideas for features that I would love to do. They happen to be comedies.
While I think storytelling is a meaningful way to spend your life... it does feel a little bit secondary or off-point.
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's been said that no man is a hero to a newspaperman, and I spent too many years as an ink-stained wretch.
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.
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.
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Writing
The beauty of love is that in giving it away, you are left with more than you had before.Collection: Love Is
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.Collection: Drama
Awakening into love is a lifelong path.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Wise
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.Collection: Powerful
I feel like if you know any women who's an essayist or a writer or a public speaker or just a public person, and they have any presence at all in any kind of social media, or any place where men can voice at them, you have to be pretty amazed at the level of special provocation and sort of violent speech and misogyny that comes at them. Any woman that's really in the public sphere has experienced this. It's kind of shocking how universal it is.Collection: Men
The drug war is a holocaust in slow motion.Collection: War
Laughter is a symptom of spirituality. Laughter is the flow of love coursing through your body. Laughter is the nectar of present moment awareness. Invite more laughter into your life and relish the magic in every moment.Collection: Laughter
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Couple
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Flower
In the wake of Katrina, what you're witnessing and what we are very careful to depict is a form of patriotism.Collection: Form
You are worthy of love and you deserve to be happy. You have these beautiful qualities and many more because you are living the gift of a human incarnation. My hope is that you will embrace these truths and your birthright to live a life abundant in love, joy, and celebration.Collection: Beautiful
Lawrence Gilliard Jr. is a fine actor and I've always felt some residual guilt that we killed him so early in The Wire. It was always planned that way; we didn't kill him because of anything he did, we don't kill off actors just to do it.Collection: Guilt
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Selfish
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.Collection: Loss
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.Collection: Healing
The best # gift we can give in any interaction is to leave people feeling lighter, # happier , and more at # peace .Collection: People
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Community
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.Collection: Yoga
What drugs have not destroyed, the war on them hasCollection: War
Health is a return to our memory of wholeness.Collection: Memories
Choices are much more practical and small when you're dealing with a real story. It's about execution, it's not about content.Collection: Real
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Running
People from here will often say, "I'm not from the United States, I'm from New Orleans."Collection: New Orleans