- Avon Barksdale: He scare you, don't he?
- D'Angelo Barksdale: You know, I'm just sayin'...
- Avon Barksdale: He scares me. Yeah. See, if he dead, you know, I could carry it better. Commin' up the way we did, you know, you kind of expect that. Waitin' on it. See, the thing is, you only got to fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once. And how you ain't gonna never be slow? Never be late? You can't plan through no shit like this, man. It's life.
- Preston 'Bodie' Broadus: [after goading Carver into hitting him] You supposed to be the GOOD cop, dumb motherfucker!
- D'Angelo Barksdale: Yeah but, Stringer, if you don't pay a nigga, he ain't gonna work for you.
- Russell 'Stringer' Bell: What, you think a nigga's gonna get a job? You think... you think it's gonna be like, "Fuck it, let me quit this game here and go to college"? No, they're gonna buck a little, but they ain't gonna walk. And in the end, you gonna get respect.
- Det. Shakima 'Kima' Greggs: How complex a code can it be if these knuckleheads are using it? Then again, what does it say about us if we can't break it?
- Donette: Boy, don't nobody give a damn about you and your story. You got money, you get to be whatever you say you are. That's the way it is.
- Det. James 'Jimmy' McNulty: [after his ex-wife hangs up on him] You know something? My ex-wife, the way she acts sometimes, the way she deals with shit... You would think a less enlightened man than myself, a cruder man than myself, a man less sensitized to the qualities and charms and value of women- a man like that, not me, but a man like that, he just might call her a 'cunt.'
- Det. Shakima 'Kima' Greggs: You just called the mother of your children a cunt.