I made True Detective like it was going to be the only thing I ever made for television. So put in everything and the kitchen sink. Everything.

Certain experiences you can't survive, and afterward you don't fully exist, even if you failed to die.

We live in a culture that has a real hard time distinguishing fiction from reality. Even when they're told something is fiction.

Often, what allows someone to behave heroically in dire circumstances is unpalatable in day-to-day life.

As human beings, we are nothing but the stories we live and die by — so you’d better be careful what stories you tell yourself.

Killing characters on television has become an easy short cut to cathartic emotion.

I knew the past wasn't real. It was only an idea, and the thing I'd wanted to touch, to brush against, the feeling I couldn't name - it just didn't exist. It was only an idea, too.

The ideas within this philosophy are certainly not exclusive to any writer.

I'm not in the service business.

I was raised by television. It was my first cultural window. It was a constant companion.

As someone with a novelistic background, I just didn't have much interest in creating stories by committee. I don't think you necessarily get the best story through that approach.

If peace is to come to earth through change in man's environment, instead of through change in man himself, it will never come. -- Philip Mauro in "The Number of Man the Climax of Civilization

People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

To sustain longevity, you have to evolve.

I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.

Guns are beautiful. But I don't like what they do.

I had somebody say to me once, 'You can't make the kind of music you're making and call yourself a feminist.' The door was slammed on them swiftly after that.

Believe in the importance of your art.

In all works of liberality something more is to be considered besides the occasion of the givers; and that is the occasion of the receivers.