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 knew the past wasn't real. It was only an idea, and the thing I'd wanted to touch, to brush against, the feeling I couldn't name - it just didn't exist. It was only an idea, too.

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.

Certain experiences you can't survive, and afterward you don't fully exist, even if you failed to die.

There's never been anything I didn't love that I didn't connect with on a personal level because to some degree, I projected upon it.

We live in a culture that has a real hard time distinguishing fiction from reality. Even when they're told something is fiction.

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