- Wallace: [while eating some Chicken McNuggets] Man, these shits is right, yo.
- Malik 'Poot' Carr: [with his mouth full] Mm-hmm.
- Wallace: Good with the hot sauce too, yo.
- Malik 'Poot' Carr: Most definitely.
- Wallace: Yo, D, you want some nuggets?
- D'Angelo Barksdale: Nah, go ahead, man.
- Wallace: Man, whoever invented these, yo, he off the hook.
- Malik 'Poot' Carr: What?
- Wallace: Mm. Muthafucka got the bone all the way out the damn chicken. 'Til he came along, niggas been chewin' on drumsticks and shit, gettin' they fingers all greasy. He said, " Later for the bone. Let's nugget that meat up and make some real money."
- Malik 'Poot' Carr: You think the man got paid?
- Wallace: Who?
- Malik 'Poot' Carr: Man who invented these.
- Wallace: Shit, he richer than a muthafucka.
- D'Angelo Barksdale: Why? You think he get a percentage?
- Wallace: Why not?
- D'Angelo Barksdale: Nigga, please. The man who invented them things? Just some sad-ass down at the basement at McDonald's, thinkin' up some shit to make some money for the real players.
- Malik 'Poot' Carr: Naw, man, that ain't right.
- D'Angelo Barksdale: Fuck "right." It ain't about right, it's about money. Now you think Ronald McDonald gonna go down in that basement and say, "Hey, Mista Nugget, you the bomb. We sellin' chicken faster than you can tear the bone out. So I'm gonna write my clowny-ass name on this fat-ass check for you"?
- Wallace: Shit.
- D'Angelo Barksdale: Man, the nigga who invented them things still workin' in the basement for regular wage, thinkin' up some shit to make the fries taste better or some shit like that. Believe.
- [pause]
- Wallace: Still had the idea, though.
- Det. James 'Jimmy' McNulty: See, that's what I don't get about the drug thing. Why can't you sell the shit and walk the fuck away? You know what I mean? Everything else in this country gets sold without people shooting each other behind it.
- Judge Daniel Phelan: Under the power vested in me by the circuit court for Baltimore city,
- [makes sign of the cross]
- Judge Daniel Phelan: I absolve you of all you sins, Detective McNulty.
- Det. James 'Jimmy' McNulty: You are my sin, you know that?
- Lt. Cedric Daniels: What're you doing here at two in the morning?
- Det. Ellis Carver: Field interviews. Police work.
- Lt. Cedric Daniels: "Police work." I got a 14-year-old kid in critical but stable condition at University and two witnesses who say one of you princes cold-cocked him with the butt end of a pistol.
- Det. Thomas 'Herc' Hauk: No sir.
- Lt. Cedric Daniels: I got his mother over at I.I.D. filing a formal brutality charge, which for Herc will make an even four in the last two years!
- Det. Thomas 'Herc' Hauk: Unsustained...
- Lt. Cedric Daniels: But all of 'em true!
- Det. Thomas 'Herc' Hauk: Lieutenant, we thought that...
- Lt. Cedric Daniels: I got one less Crown Vic than I had last night, I'm out two Kevlar vests that burned in the car, two hand-held radios, a shotgun and I'm about to lose this idiot here for a week or two of medical! And for WHAT?
- Det. Ellis Carver: Lieutenant, we thought...
- Lt. Cedric Daniels: What did you learn when you went into the Terrace at two in the morning to conduct field interviews? What valuable information did we acquire from this situation? I.I.D. is gonna be on all three of you by afternoon. If you don't get a story straight by then, you're gonna have a file thick enough to see the light of a trial board. Now, tell me, who cold-cocked the kid?
- Det. Roland 'Prez' Pryzbylewski: [after several seconds of silence] Me.
- Lt. Cedric Daniels: [intensely] Why?
- Det. Roland 'Prez' Pryzbylewski: He pissed me off.
- Lt. Cedric Daniels: No, Officer Pryzbylewski, he did NOT piss you off. He made you fear for your safety and that of your fellow officers.
- Det. Ellis Carver: Kima, if you don't my asking, when was it that you first figured that you liked women better than men?
- Det. Shakima 'Kima' Greggs: I mind you asking.