“It’s a hangover — they’re always going to call me a mystery writer no matter what I do. I could write a romance novel and they’d say “a thriller by George Pelecanos.”

“Once they’re in the book, they’re going to see things that they probably haven’t thought about on their own, and I’m going to take them to a place that hopefully makes them look at the world in a different way after they finish the book. And maybe some people who have some kind of influence will look at this and say: You know what? We shouldn’t be locking up as many kids as we do, because that doesn’t do anything but make them criminals.”

“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 cuts across color lines — this is a class thing.

We were always on the side of labor, as I am. We were on the side of the police officers who walk the beat, kids on the corner who are selling drugs — anybody who was the working person. If you were in management, you were a bad guy.”

Read the whole damm awesome interview.

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