The Atlantic really gave me my writing career - even just the conviction to be a writer.

Most television shows are going to require an actor sign up from four to six years, but an anthology show really amounts to five or six months at the most. I thought serious actors might be attracted to that.

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.

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

The Atlantic really gave me my writing career - even just the conviction to be a writer.

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.

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