Know Your Place

The Wire 4×9

Det. William 'Bunk' Moreland: No more fucking bodies from you. No more comebacks or get-evens on this. No more killing... You owe me your word.
Omar Little: All right, man. No bodies on me.

Det. William 'Bunk' Moreland: You really want to ease my mind, you'll let me drive you down to Aberdeen rail station, put you on a northbound train.
Omar Little: Naw, man. Baltimore's all I know. You know what it is like, homey. Man gotta live what he know, right?

Joseph 'Proposition Joe' Stewart: So now you come over East Side and expect me to hide you. Why is it that every Baltimore nigger think that running the fuck away means crossing downtown? Shit, you should be in New York or Philly or some shit. Joseph 'Proposition Joe' Stewart: You know what the problem with these here machines? They too cheap to begin with. Some people would think for what it's worth to fix it and make the shit work right, you might as well dump them and get another.

Deputy Commissioner for Operations William A. Rawls: Mr. Mayor, about Ervin. If you don't mind my asking, why keep him as a puppet commissioner when you can just fire the guy?
Councilman Thomas 'Tommy' Carcetti: ...
Norman Wilson: We mind you asking.

Randy Wagstaff: What about that boxing guy, Mr. Cutty? What's wrong with Cutty?
Michael Lee: I don't know. Like, he just too friendly, you know? That shit creep me out, man. Like, he some type of faggot or something. ... I don't know. He just too friendly, you know? Everybody just too motherfucking friendly.

Roland 'Prez' Pryzbylewski: I don't get it. All this so we score higher on the state tests? If we're teaching the kids the test questions, what is it assessing in them?
Grace Sampson: Nothing. It assesses us. The test scores go up, they can say the schools are improving. The scores stay down, they can't.
Roland 'Prez' Pryzbylewski: Juking the stats.
Grace Sampson: Excuse me?
Roland 'Prez' Pryzbylewski: Making robberies into larcenies, making rapes disappear - you juke the stats and majors become colonels. I've been here before.
Grace Sampson: Wherever you go, there you are.

Maj. Cedric Daniels: It's funny how it works out. All those years I'm trying to climb the ladder, kissing ass, covering ass, doing what I'm told. I finally let some of it out, tell 'em what I really think, and I'm going from lieutenant to colonel in a little more than a year. And, you, you're worried sick about those subpoenas and worried that Lester's killing you with your boss...
A.S.A. Rhonda Pearlman: But the subpoenas get me promoted...
Maj. Cedric Daniels: You know, Marla once said to me, "You cannot lose if you do not play." But here we are, right? Maybe it's changing.
A.S.A. Rhonda Pearlman: What is?
Maj. Cedric Daniels: The city, the way things work or don't. Maybe we're turning a corner here and it's not gonna be so unbelievably fucked up any more.

David Parenti: So, they didn't know the salad fork from whatever the other fork is for. So what?
Howard 'Bunny' Colvin: I knew they'd be at a loss, but the extent of it... I'm talking about feelings - why they feeling this... this plummet from masters of the universe to abject fear to humiliated fury and no awareness of it.
David Parenti: Who says they're not aware? Maybe they just didn't acknowledge.
Howard 'Bunny' Colvin: My point is, where do you start with them if they can't even admit their feelings about who they are and what they doing in this world?...

Howard 'Bunny' Colvin: They're not fools. They know exactly what we expect them to be.

Michael Lee: I got a problem I can't bring to no one else...

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