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.

I was raised in a heavily Catholic family. Early and consistent encounters with mysticism.

And if we’re talking about hard-boiled detectives, too, what could be more hardboiled than the worldview of Ligotti or Cioran? They make the grittiest of crime writers seem like dilettantes. Next to The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Mickey Spillane seems about as hard-boiled as bubble gum.

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

I made True Detective like it was going to be the only thing I ever made for television. So put in everything and the kitchen sink. Everything.

The idea of being a show runner was very attractive to me, to create and control something.