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.

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

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 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.

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

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

I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision.