Somewhere back in the beginning of time, this district had itself a civic dilemma of epic proportions. The city council had just passed a law that forbade alcoholic consumption in public areas; on the streets and on the corners. But the corner is, it was and it always will be the poorman's lounge. It's where a man wants to be on a hot summer's night. It's cheaper than a bar. Catch a nice breeze and watch the girls go on by. But the law is the law so what are the western cops gonna do? They arrest every dude for tipping back a High Life, there'd be no time for any other kind of police work. And if they look the other way, they open themselves up to all kinds of flaunting, all kinds of disrespect. Now, this is before my time but somewhere back in the 50's or the 60's, there was a moment of goddamn genius by some nameless smokehound who comes out the Cut-Rate one day and on his way to the corner he slips that just bought pint of elderberry into a paper bag. A great moment of civic compromise. That small wrinkled ass paper bag allowed the corner boys to have their drink in peace and gave us permission to go and do police work. The kind of police work that's actually worth the effort, that's actually worth taking a bullet for. Dozerman got shot last night buying three vials. Three. There has never been a paper bag for drugs. Until now.
S3 E2All Due Respect
Yo, Omar, this right here, is a Barksdale joint.
[nonchalant] Do tell!
S3 E3Dead Soldiers
If the Gods are fucking you, you find a way to fuck them back. It's Baltimore, gentlemen; the Gods will not save you.
That's good. That's like a forty degree day. Ain't nobody got nuttin to say about a forty degree day. Fifty? Bring a smile to your face. Sixty? Shit, niggas are damn near barbecuing that mothafucka. Go down to twenty? Niggas get they bitch on. Get they blood complainin... but forty? Nobody give a FUCK about forty. Nobody remember forty, and ya'll niggas is giving me way too many forty degree days. What the fuck?!
[to McNulty] How come they know you're police when they hook up with you. And they know you're police when they move in. And they know you're police when they decide to start a family with you. And all that shit is just fine until one day it ain't no more. One day, it's 'You should have a regular job.' and 'You need to be home at five o'clock'.
"You need to stop fucking waitresses."
[to Bunk] Rawls and Foerster have crawled up my backside and they're gonna stay there until you find Dozerman's gun. Now, I would like it very much if I could unclench my ample ass cheeks, if you don't mind, and rid myself of that discomfort.
[types in "Peanut" in database] 89? And that's just the ones with Westside addresses.
Man, you got to narrow that shit down. Find some way to work with all them "Peanuts."
Motherfucker, do I look like George Washington Carver?
S3 E4Hamsterdam
From the looks of things, Stringer Bell's worse than a drug dealer.
He's a developer.
This pay how much?
Let's treat it like a real job. Say $5 an hour, $30 on a day, max.
That's less than minimum wage.
But there's no withholding, Bubs. It's tax-free.
Game done changed.
Game's the same, just got more fierce.
Man, that's him right there in the G35, man.
Wearing it retro.
That shit is tight!
For $130, it better be.
Hell yeah! I'mma get me one of those motherfuckers!
(snort) You must be going to get that Muggsy Bogues, then. Your Mini-Me ass gonna be swimmin' in that Unseld.
As usual, man, y'all fools are missing my point. That boy came up short on that money last week, and y'all see he out here grinding. So where that money at?
You need to look beyond what he drivin' or wearing on his back. That boy got a girlfriend?
He run with this little freak up at the high school.
She wearing ice?
She wearing an onion. (high-fives Sapper) That's about all I can remember!
(laughing) Hell yeah.
Yo, check out the girl. High school girl with platinum around her neck? Only one place it came from.
Give my man his thing.
[Sapper hands Cutty a pistol]
Sig Sauer. That ain't no Lorcin, dawg.
I'm used to revolvers, man. .38 don't jam.
Don't hold 15, neither.
...The game done changed.
Game the same, just got more fierce.
S3 E5Straight and True
[to Stringer] I had such fuckin' hopes for us.
For a cold-ass crew of gangstaz, y'all carried it like Republicans and shit.
What you doing?
Robert's Rules says we got to have minutes of the meeting. These the minutes.
Nigga, is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
Middle management means that you got just enough responsibility to listen when people talk, but not so much you can't tell anybody to go fuck themselves.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's The Wire pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.