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

I've found that all weak people share a basic obsession - they fixate on the idea of satisfaction. Anywhere you go men and women are like crows drawn by shiny objects. For some folks, the shiny objects are other people, and you'd be better off developing a drug habit.

If I write scripts that nobody likes, I don't think we'll be doing 'True Detective.'

Some people, no matter where they look, they see themselves.

The Atlantic really gave me my writing career - even just the conviction to be a writer.

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

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.