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

For me as a storyteller, I want to follow the characters and the story through what they organically demand.

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

My ultimare goal is, without illusion and without sentimentality, merely by telling the truth as I see it, to break your heart. If I can break your heart and cause your awareness to expand to include another person's experience, even a fictional person's experience, and to inhabit for a moment their sorrow and suffering, then I think it expands us as people.

I don't think you can create effectively toward expectation. I'm not in the service business.

In the summer of 2010, I was working on a version of "True Detective" that I was thinking might be my next novel, and it was told in these two first-person voices; Cohle and Hart's voices.

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