Top 100 The Wire Quotes
#1. The art of spreading rumors may be compared to the art of pin-making. There is usually some truth, which I call the wire; as this passes from hand to hand, one gives it a polish, another a point, others make and put on the head, and at last the pin is completed.
John Newton
#2. 'The Wire' really is an American classic, and I think that's something to be very proud of.
Wendell Pierce
#3. Frank Sobotka in 'The Wire' on HBO was one of the greatest characters I've ever played. They cut his throat at the end of that season. There's something about creative coupling that seems to go with great characters, and the fact that you can never play them again once you're done.
Chris Bauer
#4. I do not think he [Reagan] put names and faces together but for a small group of people. There were a few, perhaps half a dozen reporters, that Reagan recognized, including my colleague Lou Cannon, and some from television and the wire services. The rest of us were faces.
David E. Hoffman
#5. I would watch the remaining 12 or so episodes of 'Breaking Bad' I haven't seen by noon tomorrow, but my wife would kill me. I watched all five seasons of 'The Wire' in a month, and she was not happy about it.
D. B. Weiss
#6. David O. Russell's best films are thrilling high wire acts that run the moment to moment risk of tumbling to the ground. In his latest, "Joy," Russell has more trouble than usual keeping his balance on the wire.
David O. Russell
#7. I read rip-and-read news, but I wasn't a reporter. I was reading the wire, and the other thing was, I was reading commercials - and I could do a hell of a commercial.
Mike Wallace
#8. There's no mistaking the fact that some of the best longform fiction out there now is in American television. 'The Wire' and 'Deadwood' and 'The Sopranos.'
Kevin Barry
#9. I'm pretty sure the world is in solid agreement that "The Wire" is worth watching all the way through.
Hank Stuever
#10. He didn't know if he was more furious with his brother, for knowing precisely how to loop the wire around his neck, or with himself, for his inability to duck out of the noose.
Maggie Stiefvater
#11. Later we learned that it was one of our own men hanging on the wire. Nobody could do anything for him; two men had already tried to save him, only to be shot themselves.
Ernst Toller
#12. It's interesting because a lot of people that stop me on the street now, and they talk about 'The Wire,' and they all have the same question: 'How come they took that show off the air?'
Seth Gilliam
#13. If you see how carefully I prepare for any kind of walk, legal or illegal, small or big, you will see that, actually, I narrow the unknown to virtually nothing. And that's when I am ready to walk on the wire.
Philippe Petit
#14. In some circles, to not have seen The Wire had become a shocking breach of social protocol.
Brett Martin
#15. What makes 'The Wire' a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In 'The Wire,' bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.
Tristan Wilds
#16. You'll walk with me out on the wire, cuz baby, I'm just a scared and lonely rider, but I gotta know how it feels ... I want to know love is wild, babe, I want to know love is real.
Bruce Springsteen
#17. I've enjoyed working on the TV series that I've worked on, in particular something like 'The Wire,' where there was so much time to tell the story and develop a character. I learned from that that it's best not to lay all your cards on the table straight away.
Aidan Gillen
#18. That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.
Ernest Hemingway,
#19. 'The Wire' was a combination of great TV and great theater.
Gbenga Akinnagbe
#20. I'm usually late to the game on shows and watch them after they've aired. But I love 'House of Cards,' 'The Killing,' 'Orange Is the New Black,' loved 'True Detective,' and 'Arrested Development' when it was on. Also 'The Wire,' though I was way late to the game on that.
Finn Wittrock
#21. I'm friends with a lot of Brits, and they tell me when they're over here what a huge phenomenon 'The Wire' has become. Some things just attain critical mass after they're already dead and buried, and I don't know why it was the case with 'The Wire'.
James Ransone
#22. In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.
Salman Rushdie
#23. I stopped watching TV because of 'The Wire.' Like, 'The Wire' ruined everything for me because I don't even want to watch anything else now.
Eminem
#24. I'm such a fan of Deadwood. I love the characters in that. They're such wonderful characters. I'm a fan of The Wire. Those are all heavily character-based shows.
Dustin Clare
#25. Walking the wire is living. The rest is just waiting.
Elissa Wald
#26. It would be very, very dangerous for a wire walker to experience fear while he is balancing on the wire. Fear has its place on earth, before and maybe after a high-wire walk, but not during for me.
Philippe Petit
#27. I watched season four of 'The Wire.' They have subtle performances that they do through their eyes. You could watch season four with the audio off and still understand what's happening through their eyes.
John Boyega
#28. I'm totally comfortable today with the success that Omar and 'The Wire' have brought me - living with that character, being recognized and remembered for that character.
Michael K. Williams
#29. Both 'The Wire' and 'Queer as Folk' had a big scope. They were panoramas, telling ambitious stories about two cities, Baltimore and Manchester, for the first time.
Aidan Gillen
#30. I was in The Wire for three years, and I left at the highlight of that.
Idris Elba
#31. I think 'The Wire' really is relatable. It reflects an ongoing issue across America, about inaccuracies in major cities between rich and the poor and some of the things that go on behind the red tape of council and government bodies.
Idris Elba
#32. I was born in a world of opera, theatre, films, poetry, art, and therefore, out of the wire, I made a stage. That's why they call me a high wire artist.
Philippe Petit
#33. To be on the wire is life - the rest - is waiting.
Roy Scheider
#34. I've been obsessed with Michael B. Jordan since The Wire. He's so charismatic and talented. It'd be even better - we'd have interracial bisexuality!
Andrew Garfield
#35. For me, when I am on the wire, I do not have a problem of eliminating or blocking fear. I do not really feel fear, although it is a fearful activity to walk in thin air, as I do without any safety device, but I am not fearful.
Philippe Petit
#36. The ticking inside
On the inside of him there's a wire fence
And past the wire fence is a dog And past the dog are thieves And past the thieves
Is a gang of bad dreams
And past the dreams
If you can get past the dreams Are the things that make him tick Tick, tick, tick
(Page 54).
Cath Crowley
#37. I'm often very relaxed when I'm on the wire. There may be some tears because this is a dream of mine.
Nik Wallenda
#38. I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees their forms move like stick storks, like great birds. They come close up to the wire fence and lean their faces against it. Their fingers hook round the mesh.
Erich Maria Remarque
#39. Never let anyone steal your power. If they try, you march right down to that junction box and cut the wire.
Grea Alexander
#40. Just as it's unfair to review a taco stand for not being a four-star restaurant, I also have to be mindful that not every drama on TV is trying to be "The Wire."
Hank Stuever
#41. 'The Wire,' I was such a fan of that show the first season - I think that's the best-written show on TV.
Amy Ryan
#42. 'The Wire's definitely one of them. 'The Sopranos' is one of my all-time favorites. Those are two big ones for me.
Ben Bass
#43. Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.
Matt Damon
#44. The rabbit presses back her ears, Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes And crouches low: then with wild spring Spurts from the terror of his oncoming To be choked back, the wire ring Her frantic effort throttling: Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!
D.H. Lawrence
#45. We can and should complain about certain horrors of the modern world, but when it comes to the treatment of mental illness, the advances made in the last hundred years have been far more significant than the space program, nuclear fission, or even The Wire, for so many fortunate people.
Rob Delaney
#46. We searched around the globe and looked at well over a hundred 'Marco Polos,' came down to the wire, and went back and looked at our Italy tapes, and we realized that we had overlooked someone. That was Lorenzo Richelmy.
John Fusco
#47. We're seeing TV series that are as good as movies were in the '70s and '80s - shows like 'The Wire,' 'The Sopranos' and 'Breaking Bad.'
Tahar Rahim
#49. I could kill Vino for all this doping crap. Strangle him slowly with piano wire just like they do in the Italian gangster movies. I bet I could get Aru to buy the wire.
Vincenzo Nibali
#50. I love HBO productions, actually, like 'The Wire.'
David Mitchell
#51. Modern American marriage is like a wire fence. The woman's the wire -the posts are the husband's.
Langdon Elwyn Mitchell
#52. I am not up there by chance. I am there by choice. And I know the wire. And I know my limits. And I am a madman of details.
Philippe Petit
#53. You can't have him, okay," she said from behind the wire barrier.
"Mm-hmm," I whispered.
"This is certainly a beautiful neighborhood."
"Yeah, I guess."
"I will scratch those eyes out of your ugly head.
Darynda Jones
#54. In TV, you can carve out a beautiful little niche like 'Breaking Bad' did. Like 'The Wire' did. Like 'Homeland' did.
Joe Carnahan
#55. Mother Teresa used the analogy of electricity: "The wire is you and me; the current is God," she said. "We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us, and produce the light of the world - Jesus.
Lee Strobel
#56. But there are still good shows like 24, Boomtown and the Wire, the Shield.
Shemar Moore
#57. Another California study counted 30,000 substance abusers who are pregnant are White woman. So, The Wire paints the picture of drug addiction, drug dealing, and drug abuse as being a specifically a Black issue.
Ishmael Reed
#59. Upon my return I found the call in my box. It was Anne's number, then Anne's voice on the wire, and, as always, the little leap and plunk in my heart like a frog jumping into a lily pool. With the ripples spreading round.
Robert Penn Warren
#60. The meat-and-potatoes work of world journalism is performed by the wire service reporters.
Bob Greene
#61. I did a movie called 'The Savages' with Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, where I played a nurse, and it showed me in a different role from what I played on 'The Wire.' It showed my range as an actor.
Gbenga Akinnagbe
#62. You don't have to tell me how long I'm on the wire,
Nik Wallenda
#63. I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#64. There are women who take it to the wire. That's what they are looking for, the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack.
Sean Connery
#65. I've fallen in love with shows like 'Homeland' and 'The Wire.' And I think 'The Office' is in a category like that.
John Krasinski
#66. 'The Wire' fans are very specific and hard core. Nobody is neutral about 'The Wire.' You either love it, or you couldn't watch it, and there is no in-between.
Deirdre Lovejoy
#67. All they expected me to do was rip and read the wire 'leads,' without doing any original reporting. It was pretty basic, but gave me a taste of how to combine my love of politics and broadcasting.
Andrea Mitchell
#68. 'The Wire' really drew on a lot of real-life situations and real-life organizations - it created fiction to make a social statement about reality.
Lance Reddick
#69. What I'm doing is a natural wonder. If not, there'd be 150 people behind me on the wire.
Nik Wallenda
#70. I shot him a broad smile, a smile wide enough to present him with a good view of the wire braces that caged my teeth. Although they gave me the look of a dirigible with the skin off, Father always liked being reminded that he was getting his money's worth.
Alan Bradley
#71. Cowards cannot pass beyond the walls or beyond the wire fences! For them, frontiers are always the end of the road!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#72. With real greatness, there's a jolt at the end of the wire. It doesn't matter how often you grab hold of the line, or how many people have grabbed hold of it before you. It's the same line. Fallen from a higher life. It still carries some of the same shock.
Donna Tartt
#73. The hatchet must fall on the block; the oak must be cleft to the centre. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. Here is the pen and the paper; on the letters in the wire basket I sign my name, I, I, and again I.
Virginia Woolf
#74. Of course, the slightest little mistake on the wire will deprive me of my life, so in that sense, yes, it is a dangerous profession. You have to pay attention; if not, you will lose your life.
Philippe Petit
#75. A man got to have a code." --Omar Little, The Wire
Chris Smith
#76. My favorite TV show of all time is 'The Wire,' which has the feeling of a project-based show. You draw in people from disparate parts of the world, and they have to work together to achieve a goal.
Michael Schur
#77. I used to practice cello while watching TV and films. I watched several complete TV series this way, including 'Lost' and 'The Wire.' As a kid, I'd read books while playing.
Joshua Roman
#78. When apostasy comes, it is because the spirit of revelation departs from us. The wire is broken between us and the source of truth. We cannot understand, though truth be spoken, since we are not possessed of the spirit of truth. We misunderstand and misinterpret.
John Andreas Widtsoe
#79. I walk on the wire; it's my profession, and there are no two high wire walks alike.
Philippe Petit
#80. I was on a well-beaten path of actors - what we all call 'the Law and Order route'. I spent two years of auditioning for everything ... and then 'The Wire' came up.
Idris Elba
#81. It's actually quite criminal how 'The Wire' was systematically ignored.
Idris Elba
#82. 'The Wire' is similar to 'The Walking Dead' in so far as everybody pulling for everybody else to get to the turning point of the story.
Seth Gilliam
#83. Is our time up and on to the next fire / Got my fingers burnt and cut into the wire.
Kim Wilde
#84. No, I don't think 'The Wire' screwed up my career at all.
Dominic West
#85. The best of American television is thought-provoking, original, brilliant, exciting - from 'The Sopranos' on, whether it's 'The Wire' or 'Breaking Bad' or 'House of Cards,' they're fantastic pieces of art.
Martin Freeman
#86. If I am practicing on the wire, and you pushed me, I would not move, and if you take a piece of wood and beat me up on the shoulder and the head, I would not move. You would not put me out of balance. You would not be able to. I am solid as granite when I am on the tight rope, and I should be.
Philippe Petit
#87. You know damn well that's not how the wire works, and if you weren't afraid of it, you'd have one yourself. It's the same as the implants, just like the dollie-slots, but it gives me an edge, yeah, because I'm not afraid of it, of what I can do with it.
Melissa Scott
#88. That win means so much. They got back into the game but I think we showed today that we want to go to the wire. We want to go all the way.
Steven Gerrard
#89. Television has - particularly at the HBO level in the United States - become a completely new genre. Something like Deadwood or The Wire is a whole new thing - there was no equivalent to that medium before. It's like a new way of telling stories.
William Gibson
#90. As a high wire walker, I do not allow myself to 'leave the wire' during a performance.
Philippe Petit
#91. Many people think the Cards at the end of the wire will cross the finish line first.
Jerry Coleman
#92. I am fascinated by the engineering. The science of constructing and understanding why it stands. And I am drawn by the madness, the beauty, the theatricality, the poetry and soul of the wire. And you cannot be a wire-walker without mingling those two ways of seeing life.
Philippe Petit
#93. Maybe that was why it was almost always the underclasses, the women, the people of color, the gay people, the ones who were already stigmatized as being vulnerable, availble, trapped by the body, who took the risk of the wire.
Melissa Scott
#94. If you've ever felt oppressed on any level, there's something from 'The Wire' that you can take and identify with.
Michael K. Williams
#95. I think 'The Wire' is my all-time favorite TV show. It's so brilliant, the way it critiques society, and how it handles that everybody who gets power loses their moral code and stops going to the root of the problem and just tries to maintain their own power.
Joel Kinnaman
#96. I consider drawings finished works of art, first of all. However, the ideas can be something that can be developed into something larger. I don't make so many drawings anymore since I'm working with language. I used to make more when I worked with sculptural things, especially the wire pieces.
Robert Barry
#97. The way that Dickens structured his books has a form that we most readily recognize now from, say, the great T.V. series, like 'The Wire' or 'The Sopranos.' There's one central plot line, but then from that spin off all kinds of subplots.
Jennifer Egan
#98. When the Bible itself becomes irksome, inquire whether you have not been spoiling your appetite by sweetmeats and renounce them; and believe that the Word is the wire along which the voice of God will certainly come to you if the heart is hushed and the attention fixed.
F.B. Meyer
#99. I don't know, a lot of people go crazy about 'Breaking Bad,' but I don't like the soap opera aspect of it and only following one character. I like the context to all of it, all the pieces, like 'The Wire.' It's more about the state of things; it's not about the narrative of a person.
Gael Garcia Bernal
#100. I remember watching 'The Wire,' because I absolutely adored 'The Wire,' and there were so many secret layers within that drama, and it was just fantastic.
Michelle Fairley
