The Wire Season 2 quotes

Stringer

[after a botched attempt to dispose guns in Baltimore harbor fails] It ain't enough I gotta be the one thinking this whole shit through. But I gotta be the one looking out for this shit and checking on this, making sure this shit is done. No, that's not enough. That's why they pay CEOs so much money; cause when shit go bad, it fall of them. Everybody else can be ducking and hiding, doing what they fucking wanna do. And when push come to shove, I'm the one that's gotta take the responsibility, and y'all are leaving me very little to work with right now!

Hold up, String-

Stringer

No, that's a very simple thing, my nigga. You drive the guns to the water. You look around, you ain't see anybody, you throw the guns. In the water. Splash.

Nobody ever thinks they're stupid; it's part of their stupidity.

Brother Mouzone

Lamar, where's my Harper's?

Say wha'?

Brother Mouzone

Harper's. The new issue.

You didn't say that one. You said The New Republic, and Atlantic, and a new somethin' else.

Brother Mouzone

I did not forget to tell you Harper's. Every week I tell you the same shit, and every week you forget half of what I say.

Stringer

You see these east-side motherfucker's over here? I want'chu to extend to these motherfucker's all the hospitality west Baltimore is famous for.

Bodie

Yeah, you want us to fuck 'em up.

Cheese

You mean to tell me there's a west-side nigga that know how to sell shit without stickin' a pistol in a fiends face?

Bodie

Yeah dog, and you better get used it, 'cause ya'll ain't sellin shit, until we bone-ass dry!

Brother Mouzone

[to Cheese, after shooting him] Pellets in plastic. Rat shot. What you need to be concerned about is what's seated in the chamber now: a copper-jacketed, hollow point 120-grain hot street load of my own creation. So you need to think for just a moment and ask yourself: what do I have to do before this man raise up his gun again?

It pays to go with the union card every time.

Name names, and come clean. You help yourself, and your union.

Sobotka

Help my union? For 25 years we've been dyin' slow down there. Dry dock's rustin', piers standin' empty. My friends and their kids like we got the cancer. No life-line got thrown all that time, nothin' from nobody, and now you wanna help us? Help me?

Spiros

[about Nick Sobotka] You don't have to worry about Nicko...

The Greek

You are fond of him Spiros. You should have had a son.

Spiros

But then I would have had a wife.

Bunk

A different look for our boy.

McNulty

Yeah, Perry Ellis, or something.

Bunk

Now, how would a just-rolled-out-of-bed-looking motherfucker like you, know the designer?

McNulty

[pauses] Okay, I'm guessing.

Bunk

It's a Joseph Abboud. He puts dark buttons instead of brass on his blazers. That's the Abboud signature.

McNulty

You know what they call a guy who pays that much attention to his clothes, don't you?

Bunk

Mm-hmm, a grown-up.

Sobotka

You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.

Bunk

Boy, them Greeks and those twisted-ass names.

McNulty

Man, back off the Greeks. They invented civilization.

Bunk

Yeah? Ass-fucking, too.

The Greek

[To Spiros] Your way, it won't work.

Daniels

[to Major Valchek] I'll tell you the truth Major. Everyone who saw the punch wrote on it. And they've all got Prez throwing the punch, no question. They've also got you addressing a subordinate officer as uh, what was it? A shit-bird?

Valchek

Fuck you. This is the Baltimore Police Department, not the Roland Park Ladies Tea.

Seniority sucks.

If you ain't a senior.