In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for True Detective was one of them.

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.

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.

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.

I fear I have praised you too much too soon. Will I lose you in your shame of believing that you can never be what I think you are?

I think that the greatest gift God ever gave man is not the gift of sight but the gift of vision. Sight is a function of the eyes, but vision is a function of the heart.

That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.

As long as the plots keep arriving from outer space, I'll go on with my virgins.

A man once said when the legend gets bigger than the man, you've lost the man and you have an unrealistic picture.

Change is REFINEMENT. Change is GROWTH. Change is MOVEMENT. Change is OPPORTUNITY.

I love discordancy. It makes people ill at ease and wakes up a part of their brain that's normally asleep.

Many writers are afraid of writing something bad, so they dont try or give up when their efforts dont lead to a masterpiece right away. If you work at it, you will improve.

To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it.

At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you.