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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The ideas within this philosophy are certainly not exclusive to any writer.

I'm not in the service business.

I was raised by television. It was my first cultural window. It was a constant companion.

Don't water anything that you don't want to grow in your life.

I see more light than dark, but when I encounter dark I seem to get lost in it.

It wasn't a glorious or grand act of misadventure but it was a start. It wasn't what I should have done but it was what I truly wanted to do.

... Everything he feels, he feels strongly. Too strongly, sometimes. I think he freaks people out.

I try to turn a written thing, when I'm in trouble with it, into a spoken thing: I start imagining what I would say to someone if I were trying to tell the story or make the argument.

I would love for the world to have a dog psychology center everywhere.

Why do you always start after my beat then rush to catch up? Do you want us to stay behind?

The opening and the folding flowers, that laugh to the summer's day.

I've always had lots of friends who share my perspective - I guess you could say that I'm a guy who aggressively pursues his happiness.

Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart.