David Simon Quotes & Sayings

If a drug dealer falls in West Baltimore and no one is there to hear him, does he make a sound? — David Simon

It's been said that no man is a hero to a newspaperman, and I spent too many years as an ink-stained wretch. — David Simon

West Baltimore. You sit on your stoop, you drink Colt 45 from a brown paper bag and you watch the radio car roll slowly around the corner. You see the gunman, you hear the shots, you gather on the far corner to watch the paramedics load what remains of a police officer into the rear of an ambulance. Then you go back to your rowhouse, open another can, and settle in front of the television to watch the replay on the eleven o'clock news. Then you go back to the stoop. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

It isn't about the welfare check. It never was.
It isn't about sexual permissiveness, or personal morality, or failures in parenting, or lack of family planning. All of these are inherent in the disaster, but the purposefulness with which babies make babies in places like West Baltimore goes far beyond accident and chance, circumstance and misunderstanding. It's about more than the sexual drives of adolescents, too, though that might be hard to believe in a country where sex alone is enough of an argument to make anyone do just about anything.
In Baltimore, a city with the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, the epidemic is, at root, about human expectation, or more precisely, the absence of expectation. — David Simon

The beauty of love is that in giving it away, you are left with more than you had before. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

Eating a meal with full awareness can be a powerful, enlightening, and healing experience. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

Genuine inner freedom is the ultimate aim of life. It is the unspoken goal of every thought you have and every action you take. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

It is not a look of horror, consternation, or even distress. More often than not, the last visage of a murdered man resembles that of a flustered schoolchild to whom the logic of a simple equation has just been revealed. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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? — David Simon

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. — David Simon

Murder often doesn't unsettle a man. In Baltimore, it usually doesn't even ruin his day. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

We have treated television as if it is not a mass medium, and we have been rewarded in kind. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell. — David Simon

Eventually, someone is going to pick up a brick. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

What drugs have not destroyed, the war on them has — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

All stress is ultimately related to loss or the fear of loss. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

A heavily armed nation prone to violence finds it only reasonable to give law officers weapons and the authority to use them. In the United States, only a cop has the right to kill as an act of personal deliberation and action. To — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

It is the unrepentant worship of statistics that forms the true orthodoxy of any modern police department. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

It's good to be good, but it's better to be lucky. — David Simon

What drugs haven't destroyed, the war against them has — David Simon

(sergeant thinking about an excellent detective who's threatening to quit)
For a squad sergeant, having Worden working for you was like having sex: When it was good it was great and even when it wasn't so hot, it was still pretty damn good. — David Simon

We have no sense of the collective anymore in America. The response to Katrina was proof positive of that. — David Simon

Awakening into love is a lifelong path. — David Simon

While I think storytelling is a meaningful way to spend your life ... it does feel a little bit secondary or off-point. — David Simon

Boiled down to its core, the truth is always a simple, solid thing — 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. — David Simon

The drug war is a holocaust in slow motion. — David Simon

Tom Pellegrini suppresses an almost overwhelming desire to see this woman dragged into a police wagon and bounced over every pothole between here and headquarters. — David Simon

In the wake of Katrina, what you're witnessing and what we are very careful to depict is a form of patriotism. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

Rural America's not coming back. That idea was lost with the Industrial Revolution. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

Choices are much more practical and small when you're dealing with a real story. It's about execution, it's not about content. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

Edgerton walks out of the interrogation room with a small kernel of rage growing inside him, a heat that few murderers ever manage to spark inside a detective. Part of it is the stupidity of Dale's first attempt at a statement, part of it his childlike denial, but in the end what angers Harry Edgerton most is simply the magnitude of the crime. He sees Andrea Perry's school picture inside the binder and it stokes the rage; how could such a life be destroyed by the likes of Eugene Dale? — David Simon

Those ... who insist that there are some moral limits that they will not violate, are forever surprising themselves. — David Simon

It is your birthright to live a life abundant in love. Make the commitment today to open your heart and let your love flow. — David Simon

The three-story derelict is home to Smitty, Gale, and Gale's baby - a nuclear family nested on the corner - and Ella is accustomed to seeing them on the front steps, waiting for redemption or a cool breeze from the harbor, neither of which seems particularly likely. — David Simon

A TV show can't hold people and institutions to account like good journalism can. — David Simon

This is CID homicide, mister, and neither heat nor rain nor gloom of night will stay these men from their rendezvous with callousness. Cruel jokes? The cruelest. Sick humor? The sickest. And, you ask, how can they possibly do it? Volume. That's right, volume. They won't be outsold, they won't be undersold; they will solve no crime before its time. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

McLarney laughs, then leaps into the parable of Snot Boogie, who joined the neighborhood crap game, waited for the pot to thicken, then grabbed the cash and bolted down the street only to be shot dead by one of the irate players.
"So we're interviewing the witnesses down at the office and they're saying how Snot Boogie would always join the crap game, then run away with the pot, and that they'd finally gotten sick of it ... "
Dave Brown drives in silence, barely tracking this historical digression.
"And I asked one of them, you know, I asked him why they even let Snot Boogie into the game if he always tried to run away with the money."
McLarney pauses for effect.
"And?" asks Brown.
"He just looked at me real bizarre," says McLarney. "And then he says, 'you gotta let him play ... This is America — David Simon

What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

To be told you've won a MacArthur fellowship is very flattering and gratifying personally. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

I come from a country that is now utterly schizophrenic 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. — David Simon

[Y]ou are ... entrusted with the pursuit of that most extraordinary of crimes: the theft of a human life. You speak for the dead. You avenge those lost to the world. — David Simon

Healing is the process of reestablishing the integration between body, mind, and spirit, creating opportunities for the return of the memory of wholeness. — David Simon

Any music can be healing if it inspires, relaxes, encourages or creates enthusiasm for life in you. — David Simon

Health is a return to our memory of wholeness. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

There are a couple of ideas for features that I would love to do. They happen to be comedies. — David Simon

In any case where there is no apparent suspect, the crime lab will produce no valuable evidence. In those cases where a suspect has already confessed and been identified by at least two eyewitnesses, the lab will give you print hits, fiber evidence, blood typings and a ballistic match. — David Simon

There should be no surprise when you come to that hideous moment for which you've spent a lifetime preparing. — David Simon

A man got to have a code. --The Wire — David Simon

The board reveals all: Upon its acetate is writ the story of past and present. Who — David Simon

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. — David Simon

The greatest contribution we can make to the wellbeing of those in our lives
is to have peace in our own hearts. — David Simon

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

Everyone lies. Murderers lie because they have to; witnesses and other participants lie because they think they have to; everyone else lies for the sheer joy of it, and to uphold a general principle that under no circumstances do you provide accurate information to a cop. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

You believe a little shithead like this is able to stay on the run for so long?" McLarney declares, returning from yet another unsuccessful turn-up of a Milligan hideout. "You shoot a guy, hey," the sergeant adds with a shrug. "You shoot another guy - well, okay, this is Baltimore. You shoot three guys, it's time to admit you have a problem. — David Simon

The best # gift we can give in any interaction is to leave people feeling lighter, # happier , and more at # peace . — David Simon

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. — David Simon

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. — David Simon

People from here will often say, "I'm not from the United States, I'm from New Orleans." — David Simon

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. — David Simon