Quotes & Sayings About True Detective

It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again.
Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant. — Agatha Christie

There's a lot of two-hander dialogue in 'True Detective,' and I needed to place those guys in locations where there were other levels of visual storytelling. It didn't necessarily have to move the plot forward, but it had to add tone or add to the overall feeling. — Cary Fukunaga

I think a lot of us responded intensely to 'True Detective' because it was so incredibly earnest. That's what made it heartbreaking and involving. — Annalee Newitz

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. — Nic Pizzolatto

My biggest dream and my biggest accomplishment was to be on HBO and 'True Detective.' It was a show that I just fell in love with. — Adria Arjona

And although she'd glibly remarked that you couldn't stand still, was this actually true or was it a hollow axiom as false and misleading as any other trite saying? Why should one not stand still? If the position in which one found oneself standing was a satisfactory and comfortable one? She felt no need, no need at all to move on from being Mma Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, wife that great mechanic, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. — Alexander McCall Smith

A show like 'True Detective' is definitely a drama. — John Wells

I enjoy setting the scene and coming up with interesting frames. 'True Detective' was a very hands-on set. — Cary Fukunaga

It was very fortuitous that the show [True Detective] actually spans seventeen years - so as I was getting older on the show, I was gaining weight. When I'm playing fifty, I'm ten pounds heavier! I don't know if they thought maybe I was method? But it actually worked to my benefit. — Michelle Monaghan

Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Paranoid can also be defined as "carefully smart"! Almost every episode of SVU is based on a true story; I'd watched my fill until they moronically cut Detective Stabler's fine-ass character. — Angela Graham

If there was one overarching theme to 'True Detective,' I would say it was that, 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. — Nic Pizzolatto

I'm usually late to the game on shows and watch them after they've aired. But I love 'House of Cards,' 'The Killing,' 'Orange Is the New Black,' loved 'True Detective,' and 'Arrested Development' when it was on. Also 'The Wire,' though I was way late to the game on that. — Finn Wittrock

My manager sent me the first two scripts for 'True Detective,' and I just thought they were so interesting and that the world they were depicting was so titillating to me. — Cary Fukunaga

I learned a great deal from [Raymond] Chandler - any writer can - but there had always been basic differences between us. One was in our attitude to plot. Chandler described a good plot as one that made for good scenes, as if the parts were greater than the whole. I see plot as a vehicle of meaning. It should be as complex as contemporary life, but balanced enough to say true things about it. The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure. Which means that the structure must be single, and intended. — Ross Macdonald

Steven stared at the detective's gun and realized there was no escape. He had an emotional meltdown, letting his true feelings spill out of him. — Amelia Morgan

This is a love story. But it is also a detective story. And best of all, it is a true story, told here for the first time. — Nancy Carpenter Brown

With 'True Detective,' you have a lot of time. How I like to describe it ... it's like you're filming a theater piece. — Adria Arjona

'True Detective' would not pass The Bechdel Test. — Cary Fukunaga

I was at the beginning stages of my pregnancy, and it never really feels real anyway, until you actually start showing and you start to feel the baby kick. Fortunately I didn't have any morning sickness or anything like that. And I really didn't want to be distracted from the work at hand, so I didn't tell anybody. It was really just towards the end of shooting where I was about five months, where I needed to tell a costume designer[ of the True Detective]. — Michelle Monaghan

It's hard because there's a part of me that wants 'True Detective' to win every award we're nominated for. But I'm a huge fan of 'Breaking Bad' and 'Game of Thrones.' — Cary Fukunaga

IN A DETECTIVE'S WORLD there was one true blight on society, and it wasn't the master criminal; after all, superpredators were few and far between. It was the media. Sunday — Lisa Gardner

Atticus killed several birds with one stone when he read to his children, and would probably have caused a child psychologist considerable dismay: he read to Jem and Jean Louise whatever he happened to be reading, and the children grew up possessed of an obscure erudition. They cut their back teeth on military history, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, True Detective Mysteries, The Code of Alabama, the Bible, and Palgrave's Golden Treasury. — Harper Lee

Detective, I don't know where the boyfriend is, really, I said. And it was true, considering tide, current, and the habits of marine scavengers. -Dexter — Jeff Lindsay

That was still my meat - the true-detective yarn. I picked it up and started to read it over, wondering for the ten thousandth time why so many people are interested in crime and its solution. — Robert Bloch

There are websites of 'True Detective' artwork out there now, and it's beautiful. And I don't want to take that away from anybody. I know what it means to me. But I don't want to take away anyone's interpretation of the show. — Nic Pizzolatto

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

I knew 'True Detective' wasn't something I could allow anyone else to develop. But by the time HBO expressed an interest, I still had no real experience. — Nic Pizzolatto

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is unlike True Detective as: it features women who do things. THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is like True Detective as: we shamelessly rip off huge chunks of stuff from Alan Moore. — Kieron Gillen

'True Detective' is a densely layered work with resonant details and symbology and rich characterization under the guise of one of the forms of this mystery genre. That's what we shoot for. — Nic Pizzolatto

For the finale, I thought the audience deserved to get a close point of view on the monster, and to recognize him the way you recognize the heroes of 'True Detective.' — Nic Pizzolatto

I was so nervous that this was 'True Detective' and that I needed to do a good job that I would just dig into every scene. — Adria Arjona

When I started on 'The West Wing,' that was at a time when this was still a stigma, because movie stars didn't do TV. Now, every movie star is desperate to find their 'True Detective.' — Rob Lowe

This idea that you can watch a show like 'True Detective,' and it was awesome, but is it really ruined for you if the finale is not your favorite episode of it? It's just odd to me. — Carlton Cuse

A lot of writers dream of feature films, but television - by way of TNT, CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark Hall of Fame - has always called my name. And after seeing 'True Detective,' can there be any doubt that the storytelling on TV is as genius as it gets? — Luanne Rice

It was every detective's nightmare. The worst-case scenario. A lead ignored or bungled, allowing something awful to be loose in the world. Something dark and evil, destroying life after life as it moved through the shadows. It was true that all detectives made mistakes and had to live with the regrets. But Bosch instinctively knew that this one was malignant. It would grow and grow inside until it darkened everything and he became the last victim, the last life destroyed. — Michael Connelly

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. — Nic Pizzolatto

I'm going to have to class 'True Detective's first season with so many other shows that were great until the final episode(s) and then lost their way. I still love this show, but I would have preferred no ending at all to this one. — Annalee Newitz

This element of surprise or mystery - the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called - is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence ... To appreciate a mystery, part of the mind must be left behind, brooding, while the other part goes marching on. — E. M. Forster

He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic," he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it. — G.K. Chesterton

All that Anne Rice crap is true, I thought on my way out the door; New Orleans really does have a vampire problem.
Besides me, of course. — J.R. Rain

In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for 'True Detective' was one of them. — Nic Pizzolatto

Nothing in the television show 'True Detective' was plagiarized. — Nic Pizzolatto

I found out a few months after we started [True Detective] that I was pregnant. — Michelle Monaghan

I am such a 'True Detective' fan. I was anticipating it each Sunday as it came. I'm kind of a sci-fi fan. I was really hooked on the 'Battlestar Galactica' series. I think I owned every box set of 'Battlestar Galactica.' I also really love 'Bob's Burgers.' — Pedro Pascal

Well, it is generally considered - though not always true - that the wife of a man so honoured is likely also to be worthy of the honour, and so it is accorded her. In the event it is false, and I have known that to be so in more than one circumstance , it is still accorded her in deference to her husband."
~Sherlock Holmes, with respect to aristocratic titles — Stephanie Osborn

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader.
Moral: there exist obsessive ideas, they are never personal; books talk among themselves, and any true detection should prove that we are the guilty party. — Umberto Eco

True, my boy. Only Hashem is omniscient, and until He decides we're worthy of His communication via prophets or the Messiah, we mortals are forced to live in a state of ignorance. I've spent my whole life learning, Detective, acquiring knowledge not only from the scriptures of my belief, but from countless other sources - American law, philosophy, psychology, economics, political science: I have studied them all at great length. Yet, a madman can slip under my nose, and I realize I know nothing. I am still a meaningless speck of dust in the scheme of things. A most humbling experience. — Faye Kellerman

Television is making, there was in independent film renaissance late '80s through the mid-90's. It was an amazing time. Television is doing that right now. So that's why everybody wants to do it. I mean if you're writing stuff like, you know, Fargo, or True Detective, or any of these things that are on, Breaking Bad, there are no rules in television. — Billy Bob Thornton

[True Detective] is an intense show, even in terms of the dialogue - there's a little rhythm to it, in particular in his monologues. I think on those days, he [Woody Harrelson] really had to stay in the zone. Because there's a certain cadence in which that character speaks and talks about life, you know? But then there are other days that he was able to be a little more loose. — Michelle Monaghan

In the official police account, the plumber was shot and robbed on the street. Not true - guys stick together - the detective didn't want the victim's wife to know he was flagrante delicto with a prostitute when wounded. I didn't want her hurt or embarrassed either. She figured it out herself. I met her later, after their divorce, and she brought up the subject. The hospital returned her injured husband's garments. She was washing them when she realized that, although there were a number of bullet holes in his body, there were none in his clothes. — Edna Buchanan

It was the first time I worked with Matthew McConaughey [in the True Detective].They're fun guys [with Woody Harrelson]. They don't take life at all too seriously, but yet they take their work very seriously. And both of them are just so committed to character and the story. — Michelle Monaghan