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

I read The Conspiracy Against the Human Race and found it incredibly powerful writing. For me as a reader, it was less impactful as philosophy than as one writers ultimate confessional: an absolute horror story, where the self is the monster.

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.

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.

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

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.

Whatever I watched, whatever I loved in 36 years of life on Earth, probably had some influence on me.