David Milch

“For a long time, I felt that was actually the best I could ever hope for - to pretend to be a good person - because I was quite the opposite.”

“Ego suppression can be an act of ostentation.”

“Apes beat their chests so they don't have to fight 24 hours a day.”

“Faulkner wrote for film, and his ear is just impeccable.”

“Someone asked me, 'How long do you intend to do 'Deadwood'?' And part of my sociopathology, I say, 'Well, when does my contract run out?' And I realize my contract ran out at the end of four seasons.”

“I am kind of an undecipherable commodity to a lot of people, including myself.”

“My relationship with the track was, I would say, at least fractionally as complicated as my relationship with my old man. So it kept me coming back.”

“I'm not saying I'm wealthy. The best thing that ever happened to me in that context was turning everything over to Rita. And the business people. I am on a leash. That's not the end of the world.”

“Learning to live with the given is the great humbling educational process of life.”

“I am an instrument of purposes that I don't fully understand.”

“When someone is good at what he does but is a nonconformist, there is a temptation in horse racing, like in all kinds of other areas of human endeavor, to dismiss him for his nonconformity rather than to recognize him for his excellence.”

“Commercials were once TV's version of the church. Which is to say, you couldn't offend the sponsor; therefore, certain values had to be underscored in the subject matter.”

“The truth is I try to show up each day available to do the work that God or whatever it is that's making, you know, the solar system work wants me to do. And I expect when he wants me to stop, I'll be the first to find out.”

“What cops are hired to do is to control people who will not abide by the social contract.”

“When I was a kid, my dad used to take me out to the race track, and so many formative experiences have to do with associations like that.”

“I have several different masks that I wear.”

“The paradox is that money never meant anything to me. And it still doesn't, except now as an occasion for regret in that there are things that I want to make sure my family is protected when I pass.”

“I try to do the story the way I feel the story should be done, and how that folds into whatever larger sorts of categories or questions is really none of my business.”

“Time will tell whether I am a wing nut or a megalomaniac. The difference between a cult and faith is time.”

“If you have a horse that can beat horses worth $20,000, typically you enter it in a $20,000 claiming race. Now there might be people who feel their horse is worth $20,000, and they say, 'I wouldn't mind seeing the horse get beat.' So they'll enter it for $40,000 so the horse looks like it's performed badly.”