"I hadn't realized until I covered the police beat just how seedy crime is."

"The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes."

"There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable."

"There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess."

"Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong."

"The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague."

It's actually quite criminal how 'The Wire' was systematically ignored.

I like crime thrillers. I like heist movies.

I have seen such an immense change from the total repression and criminality of homosexuality in my lifetime. It does make me much more buoyant and optimistic about the future. If that change can occur in that time there's hope for many other changes.

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.

“History is the study of the world’s crime.”

“A curse burns bright on crime.” 

“If you don't recognize your own crimes, there's no impediment to continuing them. There's a pretty dramatic example of that right at this moment. This happens to be the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's decision to launch the war against South Vietnam. Forgetting the fiftieth anniversary of the launching of one of the major atrocities in post-Second World War history is pretty severe. But almost nobody has noticed it. I don't think we'll hear a word about it. And, yes, that opens the way to further aggression.” 

“Aggression is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” 

“In fact, most of what they're calling crime is a kid caught with a joint in his pocket. Why do people think of that as the problem?” 

“Victors do not investigate their own crimes, so that little is known about them...” 

“The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill civilians, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their” 

“Bombing of urban areas was not considered a war crime at Nuremberg; reason is, the West did more of it than the Germans.” 

“The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.” 

“The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category—except for the category of familiarity.” 

“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.” 

“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.” 

I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who's spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit.

“Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.”