True Detective TV series

Marty Hart: You know, Ive seen all the different types. We all fit a certain category-- the bully, the charmer, the, uh, surrogate dad, the man possessed by ungovernable rage, the brain-- and any of those types could be a good detective, and any of those types could be an incompetent shitheel.

— True Detective TV series art

Marty Hart: There can be a burden in authority, in vigilance, like a fathers burden. It was too much for some men. A smart guy whos steady is hard to find. I was all right, better than some, but, you know, I knew how to talk to people, and I was steady. Rust-- now his Texas files were classified or redacted, and he wasnt big on talking except when you wanted him to shut up, but he was smart.

— True Detective TV series art

Rust Cohle: Id consider myself a realist, alright? But in philosophical terms Im whats called a pessimist.

— True Detective TV series self

Rust Cohle: I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, this accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybodys nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

— True Detective TV series war

Rust Cohle:I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that its obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide.

— True Detective TV series self

Rust Cohle: This place is like somebodys memory of a town, and the memory is fading. Its like there was never anything here but jungle.

— True Detective TV series memory

Billy Lee Tuttle: I dont mean to tell men of your positions, but there is a war happening behind things.

— True Detective TV series war

Rust Cohle: I think about my daughter now, and what she was spared. Sometimes I feel grateful. The doctor said she didnt feel a thing, went straight into a coma. Then, somewhere in that blackness, she slipped off into another deeper kind. Isnt that a beautiful way to go out, painlessly as a happy child? Trouble with dying later is youve already grown up. The damage is done. Its too late.

— True Detective TV series time

Maynard Gilbough: Hmm yeah I think the job does that to a lot of guys. Changes ya. Some guys just notice thats all.

— True Detective TV series change

Rust Cohle: I cant say the job made me this way. More like me being this way made me right for the job. I used to think about it more, but you reach a certain age you know who you are. Now I live in a little room, out in the country behind a bar, work four nights a week, and in between I drink. And there aint nobody there to stop me. I know who I am. And after all these years, theres a victory in that.

— True Detective TV series work

Jan: What do you know about where that girls been? Where she come from? You wanna know Beths situation fore she ran out on her uncle?

— True Detective TV series you

Marty Hart: Well, she dont look like a woman to me. At that age she is not equipped to make those kinda choices. But I guess you dont give a shit what kind of damage shes doin to herself as long as youre makin your money.

— True Detective TV series art

Jan: Girls walk this Earth all the time screwin for free. Why is it you add business to the mix and boys like you cant stand the thought? Ill tell you. Its cause suddenly you dont own it the way you thought you did.

— True Detective TV series time

Rust Cohle: You got some self loathing to do this morning, thats fine, but it aint worth losing your hands over.

— True Detective TV series self

Rust Cohle: Just observation and deduction. I see a propensity for obesity. Poverty. A yen for fairy tales. Folks puttin what few bucks they do have into a little wicker basket being passed around. I think its safe to say nobody heres gonna be splitting the atom, Marty.

— True Detective TV series art

Rust Cohle: Yeah, well if the common goods gotta make up fairy tales then its not good for anybody.

— True Detective TV series good

Joel Theroit: You were as blind to him as your footprints in the ashes, but he saw you. He saw you in those dark corners. He heard you -- oh my brothers -- he heard those thoughts.

— True Detective TV series thoughts

Joel Theroit: You are a stranger to yourself, and yet he knows you. And when your hard heart made you like unto the stone and broke you from his body, which is the stars and the wind between the stars, he knew you.

— True Detective TV series art

Joel Theroit: This world is a veil, and the face you wear is not your own. Your sorrows pin you to this place; they divide you from what your heart knows.

— True Detective TV series art

Rust Cohle: Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. Its catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, hes effective at proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking.

— True Detective TV series religion

Marty Hart: Well, I dont use ten dollar words as much as you, but for a guy who sees no point in existence, you sure fret about it an awful lot. And you still sound panicked.

— True Detective TV series art

Rust Cohle: If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of shit; and Id like to get as many of them out in the open as possible.

— True Detective TV series war

Marty Hart: Well, I guess your judgment is infallible, piece-of-shit-wise. You think that notebook is a stone tablet?

— True Detective TV series art

Rust Cohle: Whats it say about life, hmm? You gotta get together, tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the goddamn day. Nah. Whats that say about your reality, Marty?

— True Detective TV series life

Marty Hart: Every time I think youve hit a ceiling, you, you keep raising the bar. Youre like the Michael Jordan of being a son of a bitch.

— True Detective TV series time

Marty Hart: Do you know the good years when youre in them, or do you just wait for them until you get ass cancer?

— True Detective TV series art

Rust Cohle: In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So Death created time to grow the things that it would kill. And you are reborn, but into the same life that youve always been born into. I mean, how many times have we had this conversation, detectives? Well, who knows? When you cant remember your lives, you cant change your lives, and that is the terrible and the secret fate of all life. Youre trapped by that nightmare you keep waking up into.

— True Detective TV series life

Rust Cohle: The newspapers are gonna be tough on you. And prison is very, very hard on people who hurt kids. If you get the opportunity, you should kill yourself.

— True Detective TV series people

Errol Childress: You must mean Son of Life, sir. That place shut down. 05, I think, just after all them hurricanes.

— True Detective TV series life

Errol Childress: No, sir. I live in St. Martin. Got a parish contract. Take care of some cemeteries, public schools.

— True Detective TV series art

Errol Childress: Now, Betty, I have very important work to do. My ascension removes me from the disc and the loop. Im near final stage. Some mornings, I can see the infernal plane.

— True Detective TV series work

Errols Sister: I was in the cane fields, and he caught me when I was alone. And the dirt was warm. I felt the dirt warm on my back.

— True Detective TV series war

Rust Cohle: Look, as sentient meat, however illusory our identities are, we craft those identities by making value judgments: everybody judges, all the time. Now, you got a problem with that Youre livin wrong.

— True Detective TV series time

Marty Hart: Yeah, and we aint gonna get em all. That aint what kind of world it is. But we got ours.

— True Detective TV series art

Eliot Bezzerides: She abandoned the two of you, I didnt. You should spend less time in a state of resistance making up problems for yourself.

— True Detective TV series time

Eliot Bezzerides: A failed marriage, a few relationships, youre angry at the entire world and men in particular out of a false sense of entitlement for something you never received. Your entire personality is an extended criticism of my values. Meant, Im sure, to compel me into engagement through argument. Do you even like what you do? Or is it just a reflexive urge toward authority out of defiance?

— True Detective TV series relationships

Ray Velcoro: I used - I used to want to be an astronaut. But astronauts dont even go to the moon anymore.

— True Detective TV series moon

Frank Semyon: Yes, but you need children to leave it to. It’s never really yours. You don’t take it with you.

— True Detective TV series children

Jordan Semyon: I’ve worked my whole life. Same as you. And not being poor is better than the opposite.

— True Detective TV series life

Frank Semyon: Well, by the second morning I was out of food. The third day the light bulb burnt out. Pitch black in there. That’s when the rats started coming out. I dozed off and I felt a thing nibbling my finger. I woke up, it was, you know, chewing my finger.

— True Detective TV series art

Frank Semyon: I grabbed it in the dark with my hands, I started smashing. And I just kept smashing it until it was nothing but goo in my hands. Two more days I was in there. In the dark. Til my dad comes home.

— True Detective TV series art

Frank Semyon: Ever since, I wondered: what if he never comes home? What if I’m still in that basement in the dark? What if I died there? That’s what that reminds me of.

— True Detective TV series mind

Frank Semyon: The water stain. Something’s trying to tell me that it’s all paper-mache. Something’s telling me to wake up, like like I’m not real. Like I’m only dreaming.

— True Detective TV series dream

Katherine Davis: You were with LA sheriffs department eight years before Vinci PD. Anything there going to hurt you?

— True Detective TV series art

Antigone Ani Bezzarides: Could you do this job if everyone you encountered could physically overpower you? Forget police work, no man could walk around like that without going nuts.

— True Detective TV series power

Antigone Ani Bezzerides: The fundamental difference between the sexes is that one of them can kill the other with their bare hands.

— True Detective TV series sex

Antigone Ani Bezzarides: Im commanding officer of this detail. You call me when you got something.

— True Detective TV series man

Antigone Ani Bezzarides: Talk to me like that again, you’re going to need a little baggie to carry your teeth home

— True Detective TV series home

Antigone Ani Bezzarides: Those moments, they stare back at you. You dont remember them, they remember you. Turn around, there they are, staring.

— True Detective TV series men

Ray Velcoro: My powers of influence are so meager in this sublunar world of ours, I try to limit the people I can disappoint. And I make sure to know the difference between my obligations and somebody elses.

— True Detective TV series people

Frank Semyon: I didnt get you to do anything. I gave you a name and you made your choice, and that choice was in you before your wife or any of this other stuff. It was always there, waiting. Didnt you use that man to be what you were waiting to become? This thing, your wife, those are just excuses. You think you were Superman, previous? And hey, own it. You think Id have done less? Thats the kind of thing that keeps you out of Heaven. I dont want to go.

— True Detective TV series man

Frank Semyon: That’s what pain does. It shows you what was on the inside, and inside of you is pure gold. I know that. Your father knew that too.

— True Detective TV series pain

Katherine Davis: Somebody dies every second of the day, and theyre not all lucky enough to do it in California.

— True Detective TV series body

Antigone Ani Bezzarides: A man of any size lays his hands on me, hes gonna bleed out in under a minute.

— True Detective TV series man

Antigone Ani Bezzarides: He put his hands on me wrong. Ive been waiting my whole life for that. I think I even went looking for it.

— True Detective TV series life

Ray Velcoro: A turn here, a turn there, and it goes on for years, becomes something else. Im sorry, you know, for the man I became, the father I was I hope you got the strength to learn from that. And I hope you got no doubts how much I loved you, son. Youre better than me. If Id been stronger, I wouldve been more like you. Hell, son, if everyone was stronger, theyd be more like you.

— True Detective TV series love

Antigone Ani Bezzarides: These facts were paid for in blood, so honor that. I don’t know if it will make any difference, but it should, because we deserve a better world.

— True Detective TV series world

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