Top 1200 True Detective Quotes & Sayings

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

A guy like Bray Wyatt, he could easily have played something in 'True Detective.'

'True Detective' would not pass The Bechdel Test.

The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average -- or only slightly above average -- detective story does.... Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way.

I watch all the shows. From 'Breaking Bad' to 'Game of Thrones.' 'Scandal' and 'True Detective.'

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.

But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own.

I didn't expect anything crazy to happen from 'True Detective.'

I spent a lot of time with a real detective, a lady detective inspector who was the only female detective inspector in the whole of East London. She and I hung out a lot. She showed me what she did and I spent time with her. So, [she was] a lot of the inspiration for the way I dressed and sometimes the dialogue in those interview scenes where we're cross examining and questioning the youths and trying to get a confession out of them.

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.

I think that is one of the things that is beautiful about fiction and that you can do through drama. If I was a detective, I could make a certain version of everything we know to be exactly true. And that would have a certain kind of truth value. And there are certain other things that we know that are emotionally true.

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

'True Detective' was the last show I got crazy about, with its 'Silence of the Lambs'-style landscape and those strip mall badlands of America.

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.

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.'

In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.

I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective novels. At heart, the principal themes of detective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the problems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past.

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.'

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.

I never once regretted doing "True Detective".

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.

I went to get a detective story. You have to kill time. But time will kill me too - and there´s the true, preestablished balance.

Anyone can write a detective story about a detective who fails, for Pete's sake. That's pretty unambitious.

I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are.

'True Detective' did change my career.

Occasionally, I have written about stories related to crime, but I have never attempted a traditional detective story. So I want to write a true detective story.

I was disappointed, but I kind of knew it was going to be an uphill struggle because of how strong the first season [of "True Detective"] was.

I think there's part of me that's longing to play a Sherlock Holmes or sort of a House character, like a real detective. Like a real, moody detective. Like a real, sarcastic, mentally ill detective. I think it would be really fun to do something like that.

to keep believing in life, until you're sure of death, it's the way a detective should be." - Kogoro Mouri, Detective Conan

I like to consider myself a detective, which is how I justify my obsession with my phone. By nature, since I was a kid, I've always wanted to be a detective, and any portal to information and investigating things I have ever been given access to, I have dived into. With my phone, unfortunately, I have immediate access to everything.

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

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.

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.

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

I've always wanted to play a detective. Always loved detective shows, right back to 'Columbo', 'The Rockford Files', 'Starsky & Hutch'.

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.

Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.

I tend to be a fan of darker shows and love 'The Americans,' 'Ray Donovan,' 'True Detective,' 'House of Cards' and 'Peaky Blinders.'

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.

'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.

The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.

When we saw 'The Knick' or 'True Detective,' they had very distinct scores that were doing very distinct things.

I suppose I'm not quite the oldest detective on the block - David Jason is. When's he going to retire and give rest of us a chance?! No, his Touch Of Frost is terrific and a wonderful antidote to the po-faced detective shows around at the moment. Anyway, I can't retire. I have a wife and five chickens to feed.

I actually went back and watched all of 'True Detective''s Season One again, which I think is a true masterpiece.

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find.

What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.

The tradition, particularly in old-school British detective things, is everybody's in the drawing room or the library, and they're all gathered, and the detective walks around and tells them where they were that night, and you see the flashbacks.

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

It's no secret - I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all. I like 'Detective Frost.'

When you're a detective on the midnight shift, you don't have a specialty: you roll on any time they need a detective, whether it's big or small.

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.

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.

Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.

I don’t think I would ever want to be a writer of detective stories - but I would like to be a detective and there is a large deal of detection in the short story.

We were seeing TV becoming increasingly cinematic, with stuff like 'True Detective.' And 'Game of Thrones' opened up 'genre TV' and showed it doesn't have to be cheesy.

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.

A show like 'True Detective' is definitely a drama.

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.'

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

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise.