Nic Pizzolatto

I'm not in the service business.

— Nic Pizzolatto

“The past isn't real.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

It’s better to not have a reputation than a bad one.

— Nic Pizzolatto

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

— Nic Pizzolatto

“For the rest of the day, her weight echoed in my empty hands”

— Nic Pizzolatto

“An expandable gold watchband nestled in the thick hair of his wrist.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

“I suppose you have to be very careful how you use your memories.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

Art was always for me an escape and a way to relate to the world around me.

— Nic Pizzolatto

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

— Nic Pizzolatto

“When it worked, reading could take away the burden of time.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

For me as a storyteller, I want to follow the characters and the story through what they organically demand.

— Nic Pizzolatto

There's never been anything I didn't love that I didn't connect with on a personal level because, to some degree, I projected…

— Nic Pizzolatto

“What I remembered about the man then was how helpless he'd seemed, and how you could tell that helplessness had made him…

— Nic Pizzolatto

“The last new song you liked came out a long, long time ago, and the radio never plays it anymore.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

For me, the worst writing generally just 'flips' things: this person's really a traitor; it was all a dream; etc. Nothing is…

— Nic Pizzolatto

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

— Nic Pizzolatto

Whatever story you're telling in Louisiana, the landscape is going to become a character in it.

— Nic Pizzolatto

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

— Nic Pizzolatto

As someone with a novelistic background, I just didn't have much interest in creating stories by committee. I don't think you necessarily…

— Nic Pizzolatto

“I’d known dudes like this my whole life, country morons stuck in a state of permanent resentment. They abuse small animals, grow…

— Nic Pizzolatto

In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different…

— Nic Pizzolatto

It's your job to come up with compelling characters who speak to an individual authenticity. If I'm not interested in the characters,…

— Nic Pizzolatto

I liked teaching, but the bureaucracy of academia and the petty intrigue... It wasn't a good fit. Once I admitted that myself,…

— Nic Pizzolatto

“An army of empty High Life cans covered the floor around the chair—an actual army, because I’d used a knife to cut…

— Nic Pizzolatto

When you're a confused 19-year-old filled with questions you can't even articulate and a kind of black rage that feeds at your…

— Nic Pizzolatto

I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a…

— Nic Pizzolatto

“Now and then she looked harassed by her own potential, like certain young people, and you might notice then the way a…

— Nic Pizzolatto

My ultimare goal is, without illusion and without sentimentality, merely by telling the truth as I see it, to break your heart.…

— Nic Pizzolatto

“Depending on the places we passed, the night around us shaded from ink black to red to purple to a washed-out yellow…

— Nic Pizzolatto

You can't really judge an actor's abilities by their career, because the business is going to pigeonhole people into whatever turns a…

— Nic Pizzolatto

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

— Nic Pizzolatto

“There’s no getting out alive, but you hope to avoid a deadline.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

“The sensation of a thing forgotten but resonating.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

The work is where I tend to feel pressure - not so much in the reaction to it.

— Nic Pizzolatto

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

— Nic Pizzolatto

Nothing in the television show 'True Detective' was plagiarized.

— Nic Pizzolatto

I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision.

— Nic Pizzolatto

“Clear of the cities, Texas turned into a green desert meant to hammer you with vastness, a mortar filled with sky.”

— Nic Pizzolatto

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

— Nic Pizzolatto

For the finale, I thought the audience deserved to get a close point of view on the monster, and to recognize him…

— Nic Pizzolatto