I find the constraints of drama actually freeing: It brings everything down to character and action.

Some people, no matter where they look, they see themselves.

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

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

The idea of being a show runner was very attractive to me, to create and control something.

At DePauw, I was teaching writing and fiction. The things I wanted to teach, more than anything else, were form and theory of the novel, of narrative. I liked those classes.

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.