A Quote by Walter Mosley
The police and I have a deal. I don't talk to them and they don't listen to me.
Related Quotes
But most of all, I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they are going. Sometimes I even go to Fun parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what? People don't talk about anything.
When I listen to my scene partners and listen to their breathing allows me to be connected to them in scenes. I am not trying to multi task, not trying to talk on the phone, but in my character.
Various things have to happen in Baltimore that are not just related to police reform. How police deal with the public is one variant, but we also have to deal with how we treat each other. We need to look at taking more responsibility for ourselves.
If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and listen. Let the character talk. Don't censor, don't control. Listen, and write.
I have a terrible problem with procrastination. A friend told me, "Well, you should go to therapy." And I thought about it, but then I said, "Wait a minute. Why should I pay a stranger to listen to me talk when I can get strangers to pay to listen to me talk?" And that's when I got the idea of touring.
I didn't make a deal with God, because you can't make a deal with God. He put me here to talk to kids and to talk to drunks and help addicts. He gave me this "job" which makes it a lot easier to get through to people.
When you're working with movie stars, part of the deal is that, if they have something to say, you'd better listen. You don't have to absolutely listen and not talk, but there is another creative force at work, and to be successful working with movie stars, you have to bring that force to work for you. You have to find something that's comfortable for them, and at the same time, that's in the parameters of what you're trying to do yourself.
I listen to the older people who talk to me. I call them my old heads, people with a lot of wisdom. They'll teach you a lot if you listen.
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
You've got to get out and talk to voters, and you've got to let them know who you are. Talk with them, listen to them, and let them know how you're going to fight for them.
Well can I just make a point about the numbers because people talk a lot about police numbers as if police numbers are the holy grail. But actually what matters is what those police are doing. It's about how those police are deployed.
You're not going to have the police force representing the black and brown community, if they've spent the last 30 years busting every son and daughter and father and mother for every piddling drug offense that they've ever done, thus creating a mistrust in the community. But at the same time, you should be able to talk about abuses of power, and you should be able to talk about police brutality and what, in some cases, is as far as I'm concerned, outright murder and outright loss of justice without the police organization targeting you in the way that they have done me.
If you ask a young man from my team, 'Would you rather deal with police or with White?' they'll tell you 'police' every time.
I deal with my sons like young men. If they have a problem with something, they come to me. I am the type of dad that will drop everything I am doing for them, and always tell them to talk to me about it.
America was founded on the fissure between slave states and free states, so these huge fault lines are just built into the American project. How we repress them, express them, deal with them, talk around them, think through them, don't think through them, is fascinating to me.
I think one of the big problems we have got - and police tell me this - is most police don't know how to deal with mental health problems. And so we need better mental health response.
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