Emma Kenney Quotes

I was able to do The Saint of Fort Washington, on the relationship between two homeless men.

'The Wire' is very realistic and based on real events.

Tennessee Williams was so adept at portraying characters who are both fallible and vulnerable. Women were a huge influence in his life, his mother and sister in particular.

I grew up in a bookless house with a father and brother who have spent most of their lives in prison, psychiatric hospitals, or living rough, and a mother who has spent her life slaving and scrimping to pay the bills, living a nervous and troubled life.

The number one cause of crime is criminals.

I don't think people who are already burdened with social, economic, psychological situations, dysfunctional families, need to be burdened with other people with the same problems.

To me poverty, mental health, and addictions don't sound like criminal justice problems. They sound to me like a social justice problem.

There is no single cause of homelessness, and vulnerable people, those with mental health problems and addictions for example, need support not punishment.

By incarcerating someone who is homeless or addicted or who suffers from mental health challenges, we only further destabilize that person and create situations where they are more likely to commit crimes in the future.

There is nothing compassionate or safe about relegating people, particularly those suffering from mental health or addiction issues, to sleep on our streets.

I started writing because I saw such a huge lack of complex stories about the inner city.

In Hoboken, when I was a kid, I lived in a plenty tough neighborhood.

Certain people are more likely to use drugs because of whatever it is: They've suffered some trauma in their life. They have risk factors like mental illness, people with learning disabilities, with attention problems.

In America people get depressed for no reason. They say, 'I'm sad my boyfriend didn't call me.' I tell them, 'How would you like to spend 12 hours on a line to get bread or a chicken?' That is depressing.

Of course homelessness has many causes and the solutions are often frustratingly complex.

Many times, I left the prison thinking, 'I'm smart. I can make it. I won't get caught up again.' But you get off downtown Skid Row, and you're a target for all of the environmental harms in that area. The pain and trauma in that area is so thick, you can almost reach your hand out and touch it.

If a kid is born into a tough situation with no means of dealing with it, you end up with kids who are mentally ill and have no way of reaching out.

I grew up in Brooklyn, in what I now know was poverty. Sharing a tiny bedroom with my two brothers, eating government cheese and passing down sneakers until they were unpassable... I simply thought the whole world lived as such, especially in pre-gentrified Williamsburg of the 1980s.

We know that all too often, homelessness and behavioral health challenges go hand in hand.

Kids who are the victims of broken families are more likely to end up in poverty, rehab, or jail. I'm a Republican, but I respect President Obama for setting the right example and addressing this problem.

The holidays are a rough time for the homeless, but it's a year-round problem we have to solve.

Homelessness and behavioral health challenges affect every neighborhood in San Francisco.

'Unforgotten' was a bit of a no-brainer. I'm a big fan of crime dramas, but often the 'investigation' part goes much too smoothly - and you don't get that with this.

Any sympathy won for Aileen Wuornos based on a lie is not sympathy at all. The question is, can we have sympathy for the circumstances of someone's life? That's what I was interested in.

The day I stopped drinking milk' is a very sensitive story telling the tale of how we forget what is 'normal' for us falls under the category of 'expensive' or 'unaffordable' for middle or poor class.