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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.