Quotes from George Pelecanos

When I was a kid in the '60s, I went shopping in downtown Silver Spring. Hecht's, JCPenney, the little retailers - they sponsored all my sports teams.

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

There's a science to brain development. The brains of teenage boys are crowded with impulse and adrenaline. By the time they hit their 20s, their brains are dominated by conscience and reason.

I was a child in the '60s and a teenager in the '70s, which was the golden age of film as far as I'm concerned, between American film and the Italian reinvention of genre film.

When I was 19, my dad got sick, and I quit college to take over his business, a coffee shop on 19th Street, below Dupont Circle in D.C. I had been working there since I was 11 years old, so it was not a stretch to think that I could do it, but my record as a teenager, in many respects, was less than stellar.

If the storytellers told it true, all stories would end in death.

I've seen firsthand how books can change people's lives. It happened to me.

'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.

Can't get my head around sci-fi or fantasy. I'm not putting those genres down; it's just that I'm not built for them.

My take on gentrification and change is it's usually always a better thing, because when you see all these businesses open and flourishing, that means there are more jobs.

At 11 years old, in 1968, my job was to deliver food on foot, so I spent my day walking around the city. I had an active imagination, jacked up by movies. I passed the time making up stories and serializing them.

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

'Random Rules' kicks off 'American Water,' and from its opening line - 'In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection' - you know you're in for something strange and special.

Sometimes I think 'The Wire' said it all, and I might as well not write any more crime novels.

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.

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 want to be read. When you write a TV show like 'The Wire,' you've got three to four million readers watching your work. Even Grisham doesn't sell that many books.

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

There's nothing funny about violence. Death is a real thing.

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

In its rather clinical view of death, 'True Grit' rivals the hardboiled world of 'Red Harvest'-era Dashiell Hammett and prefigures Cormac McCarthy by 20 years.

Any time you have poverty, joblessness, sub-par public schools, and a lack of opportunity, you're going to have a high rate of crime.

Many fathers and sons never get to reconcile their differences or come to an understanding that fills the gap between love and expectations.

I do feel like that's what a writer does, is he goes into other people's heads.