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

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.

As someone with a novelistic background, I just didn't have much interest in creating stories by committee. I don't think you necessarily get the best story through that approach.

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.

You just do the best you can, and when you're able to connect with people, and when you do, it's just incredibly gratifying.

The work is where I tend to feel pressure - not so much in the reaction to it.