People want to see the world the way they want to see it, not the way it is.

I go to church for the cultural element. It's where you go to see Greek people once a week. It's real important to me, and I hope my children see they're part of something bigger than just this family.

I'm a fast driver.

I'd get off the set of 'The Wire' at 3 A.M. or even 4 A.M. and drive home to Washington to see my kids sleep and give them a kiss. I'd get up at 7 A.M., while the kids were still in bed, and drive back to Baltimore.

I never went to a writing school, so 'The Wire' was my writing school.

I'm more apt to shed a tear than my wife about family matters.

There was a hole in Washington fiction, I felt, when I started out. Most D.C. novels were about politics or the federal city or people who lived in Georgetown or Chevy Chase - it was definitely a very narrow focus.

What we were all always saying with 'The Wire' was that there's a whole group of people that America just sort of wants to throw away. They want to forget about them, and if they could, they'd get rid of them. They are Americans - they're worth saving; they're worth helping.

It's a tradition that a writer will try to plant his flag in a certain city and protect that. The way to get your rep is to find the essence of the city and get it down on paper.

I've been working in adult prisons and juvenile prisons for some time.

'True Grit' is one of the few books my sons let me read to them - and paid attention to - when they were younger.

I find 'True Grit' to be one of the very best American novels: It is a rousing adventure story and deeply perceptive about the makeup of the American character.

Is there a more violent book than the Bible?

Guys who feel like it makes you a man to make babies, they're completely misguided. It makes you a man to be a father. And I'm not moralising about marriage or anything. I understand that people split up, and marriages don't work out, and people do the best they can. But if you're going to not be there from the very beginning, then don't do it.

Kids need a father around to make them whole. They need their mom.

Until a book starts forming in your head, you always wonder, 'Am I going to be able to do this again?'

I live in a bigger house, but I still live in the neighbourhood I grew up in.

I always overtip. When I go to England, people think I'm stupid.

'Treme' begins after Hurricane Katrina, and it's a year-by-year account of how everyday people there put their lives back together. It's sort of a testament to, or an argument for why, a great American city like New Orleans needs to be saved and preserved.

'The Deuce' takes a look at the remarkable paradigm of capitalism and labor: where money goes and how it's routed; who has power and who doesn't; who is exploited and who's not.

'The Deuce' came about when David Simon and I were put in contact with a guy who, along with his twin brother, owned a couple bars in Times Square.

I am on my bike daily, and most of the locations, warehouses and specific residences from 'The Cut' were found while I was riding.

I've just been very interested in the living side of Washington, rather than the federal side, since I was a kid.

My father was a Marine who fought in the Pacific in WW II. He was a very tough guy, but after the war, he lived his life in a quiet and reserved manner because he had nothing to prove. I know now that he internalized his war experience.