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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.