I find the constraints of drama actually freeing: It brings everything down to character and action.

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.

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

To me that's what art is about - when you don't really have any control over your desires to do it.

When I first read Lord of the Rings I wanted to see a film of it. But at that time the technology wasn't there, there was no such thing as CGI.

The most important thing is to keep trying...

I was quite unable to make any white metal alloy hard enough to be made into powder by my machinery

And for me to have my name mentioned among some of the Super Bowl MVPs that played in the Super Bowl, words can't describe it. It's totally a dream come true.

Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can't do what we do is because they're so comfortable doin' what they do.

Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.

I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man.

How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else?