David Milch

What cops are hired to do is to control people who will not abide by the social contract.

The paradox is that money never meant anything to me. And it still doesn't, except now as an occasion for regret in that there are things that I want to make sure my family is protected when I pass.

I had the erroneous conviction that all of history tended toward my birth and would diminish into chaos or inconsequence after I was gone. When you realize that's not so, the proper humility is to defer.

Your fundamental responsibility is to stay true to the deepest nature and intention of the materials.

So much of what we do is shame-based, and when you're teaching, you have the opportunity to answer to the best parts of your nature, so I'm always grateful for that chance.

When someone is good at what he does but is a nonconformist, there is a temptation in horse racing, like in all kinds of other areas of human endeavor, to dismiss him for his nonconformity rather than to recognize him for his excellence.

Time will tell whether I am a wing nut or a megalomaniac. The difference between a cult and faith is time.

What constitutes - where are we when we sleep? What is our sense of reality at that moment? It's, you know, science now suggests to us that what has been perceived as matter for a long time is, in fact, energy.

I had proposed to HBO a series about the city cops in Rome at the time of Nero. What had interested me was the idea of order without law. The Praetorian Guard, who were the emperor's guards, understood how they were to proceed. But for the city cops, who were called the Urban Cohorts, there was no law at all.

For a long time, I felt that was actually the best I could ever hope for - to pretend to be a good person - because I was quite the opposite.

My process is very disempowering to the director anyway, so it's essential that you be respectful. Once we've sort of found the scene, I have to get out of there, because you don't want to split the actor's idea of who's in charge.

It's kind of an intuitive process. I wish that it were more systematic, but it just isn't.