David Simon
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.Collection: Believe
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?Collection: Meaningful
What city has given the world more in terms of American culture than New Orleans? There is none. Not New York. Not L.A. Not Chicago. Not anywhere, in the sense that African American music has gone around the world twenty times over, and it's continuing to evolve. It is our greatest cultural export.Collection: New York
The rest of America, with some small exceptions, has been bulldozed and rebuilt and then bulldozed and rebuilt again. Our places have become interchangeable. Here in New Orleans, everything from the architecture to the way in which people eat, the way in which they talk, the way in which they do business, the way in which they dance, the manner in which everything is set to a parade beat, they're all from here. There's no place like it.Collection: New Orleans
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.Collection: Cities
Barack Obama's understanding of what the drug war had cost the country was meaningful. And very quietly in his second term, he and Eric Holder did make some adjustments in terms of the use of the Department of Justice, on the federal level. You saw ratcheting back of drug prohibition, and mass incarceration. You also saw, on the part of some certain states, a realization that they followed the war on drugs to a useless place, that they were only doing damage to communities, and bankrupting budgets with prison construction.Collection: Meaningful
The best I can hope for is that I might provoke a water cooler argument between you and somebody else. But it is not journalism. It doesn't have the rigor of journalism. It doesn't have the proof positive that facts provide. So it can be readily dismissed as mere propaganda. But I can certainly reach more people.Collection: People
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.Collection: Running
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?Collection: Love
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.Collection: Acting
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.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Bystanders
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: People
Healing is the process of reestablishing the integration between body, mind, and spirit, creating opportunities for the return of the memory of wholeness.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Growing Up
That's what we were interested in: how power and money ran itself, much more so than 'drugs are bad, drugs are good.' That seems to me a simple moral equation and one you don't have to spend 60 hours of television examining. And I think the same thing is true with how we approached pornography or prostitution. Prostitution's been around since the Bible, and pornography's been around since about 15 minutes after the French guy invented the first camera.Collection: Simple
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.Collection: Light
Eventually, someone is going to pick up a brick.Collection: Bricks
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.Collection: Believe
It is your birthright to live a life abundant in love. Make the commitment today to open your heart and let your love flow.Collection: Heart
The mismanagement of American newspapering is quite remarkable. But all of the fellows responsible are now on a golf course in Hilton Head or some such (place), having secured their bonuses and golden-parachute buyouts.Collection: Golf
Eating a meal with full awareness can be a powerful, enlightening, and healing experience.Collection: Powerful
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.Collection: Men
You shoot another guy—well, okay, this is Baltimore. You shoot three guys, it’s time to admit you have a problem.Collection: Guy
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.Collection: Mind
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.Collection: Cutting
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.Collection: Voice
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.Collection: Life Is Too Short
The same creative force that generated the universe created your body. It is vibrating with intelligence and spirit. It is ultimately sacred and worthy of your love, respect and intention. Take good care of it and nourish it with the most healing, life-sustaining foods, experiences, and sensory impressions.Collection: Healing
Genuine inner freedom is the ultimate aim of life. It is the unspoken goal of every thought you have and every action you take.Collection: Goal
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.Collection: Heart
What appeals to me in The Deuce is some of the same things that made me interested in The Wire, which is there seems to be a theme here around markets and capitalism and labour. This is a moment, 1971, of something that was under the counter: then brown paper bags suddenly became legal, pornography. And it was really the birth of an industry which is now a multi-billion dollar American standard. And these people were the pioneers at a moment where there really were no rules, then suddenly there was a legal industry that was allowed to exist.Collection: People
Those...who insist that there are some moral limits that they will not violate, are forever surprising themselves.Collection: Forever
Acceptance means focusing on the present while assessing the choices available to you in this moment. If there are many possibilities, make the choice that is likely to bring the most evolutionary results. If there is only one choice, take it. If there are no obvious choices, relax and accept the fact that for now, you cannot do anything.Collection: Mean
Rural America's not coming back. That idea was lost with the Industrial Revolution.Collection: Ideas
All stress is ultimately related to loss or the fear of loss.Collection: Stress
Boiled down to its core, the truth is always a simple, solid thingCollection: Simple
We have no sense of the collective anymore in America. The response to Katrina was proof positive of that.Collection: America
The greatest contribution we can make to the wellbeing of those in our lives is to have peace in our own hearts. When our hearts are filled with gratitude and our minds are brimming with enthusiasm, everyone we encounter leaves our space feeling a little bit lighter than when they entered it.Collection: Gratitude
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.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Moving
What drugs haven't destroyed, the war against them hasCollection: War
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.Collection: Reading
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.Collection: Keys
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.Collection: War
From a spiritual perspective, freedom from attachment to a particular outcome is the ultimate expression of liberation. We can choose the actions we take, but we cannot control the consequences of our choices.Collection: Spiritual