Meldrick Lewis quotes from Homicide: Life on the Street

Lewis

Murderers lie cuz they got to, witnesses lie because they think they got to, and everyone else lies for the sheer joy of it.

Lewis

Refresh my memory. Was the name Abraham Lincoln up on the board today?

Lewis

You go when it's time to go, and all the rest is homicide.

Lewis

I watched them slice up my partner in the morgue. Scheiner took the electric saw; sliced off the top of his head, took his heart, weighed it, and tossed it into a steel container like the kind you find in a restaurant kitchen. How many times I been to the M.E.? How many times I've seen him slice the top of somebody's head off? Couple hundred times maybe, maybe more. But I never really noticed, I never really watched. Till I saw Steve.

Lewis

I feel real good. I feel good that any fucking asshole can go down to the corner store and buy himself a semiautomatic weapon and start blasting. You know what else I feel good about? I feel good about you people; you media motherfuckers. Gonna take this shit and put it on the evening news. Your ratings are gonna be good. You vultures oughta be ashamed of your goddamned selves.

Lewis

See, the thing is, we the Murder Poh-leece and we have but one given and that is that everybody is a liar. Me? See, I rely on [taps heart] the most sensitive machine there is. See, it knows when somebody is lumpy and when somebody is tellin' the truth. And this [taps head]...this is smart enough to trust what this [taps heart] can detect.

Lewis

Iced tea keeps me in a summertime frame of mind.

Lewis

[about Brodie] I'm Lewis, this is Bayliss, and that's the young Jimmy Olsen over there.

Lewis

Not a single murder this week. That's not the Baltimore I know and love.

Lewis

[to onlookers] Okay. Who here saw what happened and wants to cooperate fully with the detectives on this investigation? [silence] Yep, our work here is done.

Lewis

[to Luther Mahoney] I remember when I was workin' as a beat cop. Our job was to clear the corner. No big deal. Just tell people to move along and most of the time, the police tell you to move along, that's what you're gonna do, you're gonna move along. But every once in a while, there's gonna be some knucklehead fool, wanna keep standing on your corner talking trash. And he told me, don't you ever, ever, let some knucklehead stand on your corner and shame you. Cause once you've done that, you're done as a beat cop. So what he suggested I do, was that I take out my billy club and smack him upside the head so hard, that everybody who heard it knows who had the last word... Luther, you're on my corner.

Lewis

You letting them tell you that you don't matter, but we do matter, Mike. We do. I miss Crosetti. Sometimes I wake up and I think I'm gonna see his big head in the squadroom. But I don't; I just see you. You a better cop than he was. I ain't taking nothing away from him, but you are and I ain't just saying that. This is the job, Mike. This is what we do. I just wanna be a good cop. And if I walk outta here and I let you smoke yourself, am I still a good cop?

Lewis

The longer I do this job, the more I realize that everything is about your relationship with your mother.

Lewis

So, Cox and Kellerman, Julia and Mikey, Bones and the Badge.

Lewis

I have danced with Junior before.