David Simon

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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.
- David Simon
Collection: Notebook
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Any music can be healing if it inspires, relaxes, encourages or creates enthusiasm for life in you.
- David Simon
Collection: Healing
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A TV show can't hold people and institutions to account like good journalism can.
- David Simon
Collection: Tv Shows
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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.
- David Simon
Collection: Country
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Our future can't be separated from the fact that we are all going to be increasingly compacted into urban areas, though we're different in race and culture and religion. And what we make of that will determine the American future.
- David Simon
Collection: Race
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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.
- David Simon
Collection: Perfect
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There were a lot of video store owners and managers out of work, once pornography became more about streaming and downloads. But the other thing is that there are a lot of people who make money by finding a place to stand and add almost nothing. It's particularly ironic if your job title is pimp. On some level, in a healthier world where sex work could be rationalized and the risk reduced, your whole job title would be extraneous anyway. It's not exactly a point of great grievance if you're a pimp that suddenly your prostitutes don't require the same level of reliance.
- David Simon
Collection: People
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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.
- David Simon
Collection: Thinking
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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.
- David Simon
Collection: Thinking
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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.
- David Simon
Collection: Country
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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.
- David Simon
Collection: Age
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Pornography has become rationalized. It's become much more coherent and profitable.
- David Simon
Collection: Pornography