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True Detective is an American television anthology drama series on HBO. The show was created and written by Nic Pizzolatto, with the first season directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga.
The Long Bright Dark [1.1]
- Marty Hart: You know, I've 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.
- Maynard Gilbough: Which type were you?
- Marty Hart: Oh, just a regular type dude... with a big ass dick.
- Marty Hart: There can be a burden in authority, in vigilance, like a father's burden. It was too much for some men. A smart guy who's 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 wasn't big on talking except when you wanted him to shut up, but he was smart.
- Rust Cohle: People out here, they don't even know the outside world exists. Might as well be living on the fucking Moon.
- Marty Hart: There's all kinds of ghettos in the world.
- Rust Cohle: It's all one ghetto man, giant gutter in outer space.
- Rust Cohle: I'd consider myself a realist, alright? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist.
- Marty Hart: Okay, what's that mean?
- Rust Cohle: It means I'm bad at parties.
- Marty Hart: Let me tell you, you ain't great outside of parties either.
- 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 everybody's 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.
- Marty Hart: So what's the point of getting out of bed in the morning?
- Rust Cohle: I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that it's obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide.
- Rust Cohle: This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading. It's like there was never anything here but jungle.
- Marty Hart: Stop saying shit like that. It's unprofessional.
- Marty Hart: And I don’t hold grudges, I believe that’s the shit that leads to cancer.
Seeing Things [1.2]
- Rust Cohle: I think about my daughter now, and what she was spared. Sometimes I feel grateful. The doctor said she didn't feel a thing, went straight into a coma. Then, somewhere in that blackness, she slipped off into another, deeper kind. Isn't that a beautiful way to go out, painlessly as a happy child? Trouble with dying later is you've already grown up. The damage is done. It's too late. You got kids? I think of the hubris it must take, to yank a soul out of nonexistence into this meat; and force a life into this thresher. As to my daughter, she spared me the sin of being a father.
- Rust Cohle: You know me. I don't see the connection between two dead cats and a murdered woman. [pause] But I'm from Texas.
- Rust Cohle: Came close another time... Lori. Maggie introduced us. It broke off. It was for the best, you know, I gave her cause. I can be hard to live with. I don't mean to, but I can be... critical. [sigh] Sometimes I think I'm just not good for people, that it's not good for them to be around me. I wear 'em down. They... they get unhappy.
- Maynard Gilbough: Hmm... yeah, I think the job does that to a lot of guys. Changes ya. Some guys just notice, that's all.
- Rust Cohle: I can't 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 ain't nobody there to stop me. I know who I am. And after all these years, there's a victory in that.
- Marty Hart: [about Beth] That girl's not 18. Sheriff know you got underage workin' here?
- Jan: What do you know about where that girl's been? Where she come from? You wanna know Beth's situation 'fore she ran out on her uncle?
- Marty Hart: There are other places she could go.
- Jan: Such holy bullshit from you. It's a woman's body, ain't it? A woman's choice.
- Marty Hart: Well, she don't look like a woman to me. At that age she is not equipped to make those kinda choices. But I guess you don't give a shit what kind of damage she's doin' to herself as long as you're makin' your money.
- Jan: Girls walk this Earth all the time screwin' for free. Why is it you add business to the mix and boys like you can't stand the thought? I'll tell you. It's cause suddenly you don't own it the way you thought you did.
- Marty Hart: [Gives money to Beth] Do something else.
- [they leave]
- Rust Cohle: That a down payment?
- Marty Hart: Is shitting on any moment of decency part of your job description?
- [Rust sniffs]
- Marty Hart: What?
- Rust Cohle: You wash up, you got some pussy on ya.
- Marty Hart: Key to a healthy marriage.
- Rust Cohle: Oh, that's Maggie, huh?
- Marty Hart: Hey! What's with your fucking nose?
- Rust Cohle: Nothing man, sorry, forget it.
- Marty Hart: I get a connotation being implied here... about my wife?
- Rust Cohle: Are you saying that's your wife? That high tide you're walking in with?
- Marty Hart: [Angrily slams Rust into a locker] You got some idea how my wife's pussy is supposed to smell?
- Rust Cohle: No, I just meant you're wearing the same clothes as you did yesterday. [slowly grabs Martin's wrists] Coupled with the fact that I ain't stupid. Wasn't making no comment as to the particularity of the scent.
- Marty Hart: You don't say fuck-all about my wife... don't say her name!
- Rust Cohle: You got some self loathing to do this morning, that's fine, but it ain't worth losing your hands over.
- Marty Hart: How would that work exactly?
- Rust Cohle: I'd just apply a couple of pounds of pressure. [tightens the grip on Martin's wrists] Snap your wrists. You're senior detective, think I'm lying?
The Locked Room [1.3]
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- Rust Cohle: What do you think the average IQ of this group is, huh?
- Marty Hart: Can you see Texas up there on your high horse? What do you know about these people?
- 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 it's safe to say nobody here's gonna be splitting the atom, Marty.
- Marty Hart: You see that. Your fucking attitude. Not everybody wants to sit alone in an empty room beating off to murder manuals. Some folks enjoy community. A common good.
- Rust Cohle: Yeah, well if the common good's gotta make up fairy tales, then it's not good for anybody.
- Rust Cohle: Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective in 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.
- Marty Hart: Well, I don't 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.
- Rust Cohle: At least I'm not racing to a red light.
- Marty Hart: I mean, can you imagine if people didn't believe, what things they'd get up to?
- Rust Cohle: Exact same thing they do now. Just out in the open.
- Marty Hart: Bullshit. It'd be a fucking freak show of murder and debauchery and you know it.
- 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 I'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible.
- Marty Hart: Well, I guess your judgment is infallible, piece-of-shit-wise. You think that notebook is a stone tablet?
- Rust Cohle: What's 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. What's that say about your reality, Marty?
- Detective Thomas Papania: You figure it's all a scam, huh? All them folks? They just wrong?
- Rust Cohle: Oh yeah! Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey, "He said for you to give me your fucking share." People... so goddamn frail they'd rather put a coin in the wishing well than buy dinner.
- Rust Cohle: The ontological fallacy of expecting a light at the end of the tunnel, well, that's what the preacher sells, same as a shrink. See, the preacher, he encourages your capacity for illusion. Then he tells you it's a fucking virtue. Always a buck to be had doing that, and it's such a desperate sense of entitlement, isn't it?
- Rust Cohle: People incapable of guilt usually do have a good time.
- Rust Cohle: This... This is what I'm talking about. This is what I mean when I'm talkin' about time, and death, and futility. All right there are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us as a society for our mutual illusions. Fourteen straight hours of staring at DB's, these are the things ya think of. You ever done that? You look in their eyes, even in a picture, doesn't matter if they're dead or alive, you can still read 'em. You know what you see? They welcomed it... not at first, but... right there in the last instant. It's an unmistakable relief. See, cause they were afraid, and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just... let go. Yeah they saw, in that last nanosecond, they saw... what they were. You, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never more than a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will, and you could just let go. To finally know that you didn't have to hold on so tight. To realize that all your life--you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memories, all your pain--it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person. And like a lot of dreams, there's a monster at the end of it.
- Marty Hart: Do you wonder ever if you're a bad man?
- Rust Cohle: No. I don't wonder, Marty. World needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.
Who Goes There [1.4]
- Marty Hart: Every time I think you've hit a ceiling, you, you keep raising the bar. You're like the Michael Jordan of being a son of a bitch.
- Marty Hart: Fuuuck! Hell of a bedside manner you've got, Rust.
- Rust Cohle: Ahh, you know, being stupid is different than going in sick, and this is a bar, not a fuckin' bedside.
- Rust Cohle: [to Marty] All the dick swagger you roll, you can't spot crazy pussy?
- Rust Cohle: [to Marty] So, enough with the self-improvement-penance-hand-wringing shit. Let's go to work.
- Rust Cohle: [to Ginger] I am so done talking to you like a man.
The Secret Fate of All Life [1.5]
- Marty Hart: Do you know the good years when you're in them, or do you just wait for them until you get ass cancer?
- Marty Hart: What always happens between men and women? Reality.
- 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 you've always been born into. I mean, how many times have we had this conversation, detectives? Well, who knows? When you can't remember your lives, you can't change your lives, and that is the terrible and the secret fate of all life. You're trapped by that nightmare you keep waking up into.
- Marty Hart: See, infidelity is one kind of sin, but my true failure was inattention.
- Rust Cohle: Someone once told me time is a flat circle.
- Rust Cohle: If you wanna arrest me, go ahead. You wanna follow me? Come on. You wanna see something? Get a warrant. Thanks for the beer. Beyond that, you wasted my fucking day, company men.
Haunted Houses [1.6]
- Beth: [on the phone to Marty] I really wanted to see you. I've been thinking about something all week. I think...I want you to fuck me in my ass. [pause] I've never done that before, but I think I want you to do it to me.
- 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.
- Maggie Hart: There's no such thing as forgiveness. People just have short memories.
- Rust Cohle: [to Marty] Without me, there is no you.
- Rust Cohle: I quit.
- Leroy Salter: You serious?
- Rust Cohle: I'll send you a letter. Yeah. Fuck this. Fuck this world. Nice hook, Marty.
- Marty Hart: A man's game charges a man's price. Take that away from this, if nothing else.
After You've Gone [1.7]
- Rust Cohle: Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you get good at.
- Marty Hart: You know, you know what, I don't think I've been very clear with you Rust. If you were drowning, I'd throw you a fuckin' barbell. Why would I ever help you?
- Rust Cohle: Because you owe a debt.
- Marty Hart: Hey. You better get those jumper cables ready, the motherfucker is lying.
- Rust Cohle: [to Maggie] Get on out of here, you're classin' the place up.
- Thomas Papania: You know there's a little church around here? Pretty old? Black minister?
- Errol Childress: You must mean Son of Life, sir. That place shut down. '05, I think, just after all them hurricanes.
- Thomas Papania: Mmm. You live around here?
- Errol Childress: No, sir. I live in St. Martin. Got a parish contract. Take care of some cemeteries, public schools.
- Thomas Papania: All right. Thanks. Hey, you know how to get to 49 from here?
- Errol Childress: Sure. About a half-mile, you'll see a left. PR 1435. Take that. About 7 miles of fields, you'll hit 49 before Crowley.
- Thomas Papania: Know your way around, huh?
- Errol Childress: Oh, yeah, boss. I know the whole coast. My family-
- Thomas Papania: [cutting him off] Thanks.
- [Papania drives off. Errol steps off the lawnmower, wipes sweat from his forehead and surveys the field he's been mowing]
- Errol Childress: My family's been here a long, long time.
Form and Void [1.8]
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- Errol's Sister: You have a good walk?
- Errol Childress: [affecting a refined English accent] Yes, my dear. Top-notch walk this morning. Top-notch constitutional. It's been weeks since I left my mark...would that they had eyes to see.
- Errol Childress: Now, Betty, I have very important work to do. My ascension removes me from the disc and the loop. I'm near final stage. Some mornings, I can see the infernal plane.
- 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... You're livin' wrong.
- Marty Hart: What's scented meat?
- Errol Childress: Come on inside, little priest. To the right, little priest. Take the bride's path. This is Carcosa.
- Errol Childress: Do you wanna know what they did to me? What I will do to all the sons and daughters of man.
- Rust Cohle: What are you doing here?
- Marty Hart: Nothin'. Nurse said I could come in.
- Rust Cohle: Are you watching me sleep?
- Marty Hart: Well you know what, I just got here; I was gonna leave, but then you woke up - Jesus, what's your fuckin' problem?
- Rust Cohle: Nothin', what's your problem?
- Marty Hart: Not a care in the world.
- Rust Cohle: We didn't get 'em all.
- Marty Hart: Yeah, and we ain't gonna get 'em all. That ain't what kind of world it is. But we got ours.
- Rust Cohle: I'm not supposed to be here.
- Marty Hart: Yeah... well, I'll come back by tomorrow, buddy.
- Rust Cohle: Why?
- Marty Hart: Don't ever change, man.
- Rust Cohle: There was a moment-- I know when I was under in the dark that something... whatever I'd been reduced to, you know, not even consciousness. It was a vague awareness in the dark, and I could-- I could feel my definitions fading. And beneath that... darkness, there was another kind. It was--it was deeper, warm, you know, like a substance. I could feel, man, and I knew, I knew my daughter waited for me there. So clear. I could feel her. [Voice trembling] I could feel... I could feel a piece of my--my pop, too. It was like I was a part of everything that I ever loved, and we were all... the 3 of us, just-- just fadin' out. And all I had to do was let go... and I did. I said, Darkness, yeah, yeah." And I disappeared. But I could-- I could still feel her love there, even more than before. Nothing... There was nothing but that love. [Sobbing] Then I woke up.
- Rust Cohle: Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light's winning.
About True Detective Season 1
- "One of the images I first saw in my head when I read the screenplay was a plain landscape towards dusk," says Fukunaga over the phone from his home in New York. "There was a still, Magritte-like light hanging in the sky and these two cold, hard characters at the front, staring at a burned-out church. I loved the starkness of that, the openness of everything being exposed to the air. 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 Kugunaga in Paul MacInnes, ”True Detective: how we made the most talked-about TV show of the year”, The Guardian, (21 Mar 2014)
- "Look, the story is what the story is," says Fukunaga when I ask him about the criticism. "It's about two men who work in a very macho industry, in terms of the area they're working in and the crimes they're dealing with. But it's about two men's dysfunction as much as anything. The show is not going to pass the Bechdel test. I considerably doubt that. So is it sexist? I don't know. I always focus more on the main characters and what they're doing, and I didn't write it, so… My job is to make the best ver-sion of that story possible."
- Cary Kugunaga in Paul MacInnes, ”True Detective: how we made the most talked-about TV show of the year”, The Guardian, (21 Mar 2014)
- What I love about Cohle is everything he says is true. Like it or not. He can’t suffer fools, and to get through everyday life, you have to suffer fools. Cohle can’t do that. No illusions. Absolutely not.
- Matthew McConaughey in Jonathan Ringen, “Matthew McConaughey on ‘True Detective,’ His Pal Woody, McConaissance”, Rolling Stone, (March 3, 2014)
- One of the great things about this is that the identities of the men, at these times, was very clear. I didn’t have to do a lot of creative wandering in my head. One of my favorite things that I got to do with Cohle was go, “Who is he in ‘95?” Here’s a guy who is coming back on to a case, just barely hanging onto the rails. He needs a case to keep his shit together, literally. In 2012, he’s off the rails. He’s cashed in. He’s fallen prey to his own beliefs. Every day that he’s alive is another day of penance, in this indentured servitude he calls life.
- Matthew McConaughey in Christina Radish, “Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson Talk TRUE DETECTIVE, Why They Agreed to Do a TV Show, Working with Each Other, and More”, Collider, (January 18, 2014)
- If you share my weakness for shows that shuffle time or have tense interrogations—like the late, great “Homicide” or the better seasons of “Damages”—you might be interested to see these methods com-bined. The modern interviews become a voice-over, which is layered over flashbacks, and the contrast between words and images reveals that our narrators have been cherry-picking details and, at crucial junctures, flat-out lying. So far, so complex.
On the other hand, you might take a close look at the show’s opening credits, which suggest a simpler tale: one about heroic male outlines and closeups of female asses. The more episodes that go by, the more I’m starting to suspect that those asses tell the real story.
This aspect of “True Detective” (which is written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Fukunaga) will be gratingly familiar to anyone who has ever watched a new cable drama get acclaimed as “a dark masterpiece”: the slack-jawed teen prostitutes; the strippers gyrating in the background of police work; the flashes of nudity from the designated put-upon wifey character; and much more nudity from the occasional cameo hussy, like Marty’s mistress, whose rack bounces merrily through Episode 2. Don’t get me wrong: I love a nice bouncy rack. And if a show has something smart to say about sex, bring it on.- Emily Nussbaum, “Cool Story, Bro”, The New Yorker, (February 23, 2014)
- To state the obvious: while the male detectives of “True Detective” are avenging women and children, and bro-bonding over “crazy pussy,” every live woman they meet is paper-thin. Wives and sluts and daughters—none with any interior life. Instead of an ensemble, “True Detective” has just two characters, the family-man adulterer Marty, who seems like a real and flawed person (and a reasonably interesting asshole, in Harrelson’s strong performance), and Rust, who is a macho fantasy straight out of Carlos Castaneda. A sinewy weirdo with a tragic past, Rust delivers arias of philosophy, a mash-up of Nietzsche, Lovecraft, and the nihilist horror writer Thomas Ligotti. At first, this buddy pairing seems like a funky dialectic: when Rust rants, Marty rolls his eyes. But, six episodes in, I’ve come to suspect that the show is dead serious about this dude. Rust is a heretic with a heart of gold. He’s our fetish object—the cop who keeps digging when everyone ignores the truth, the action hero who rescues children in the midst of violent chaos, the outsider with painful secrets and harsh truths and nice arms.
- Emily Nussbaum, “Cool Story, Bro”, “The New Yorker”, (February 23, 2014)
- It was about the evil of men who treat women as lurid props, but the show treated women as lurid props.
- Emily Nussbaum, “The Disappointing Finale of “True Detective””, The New Yorker, (March 10, 2014)
- Like almost all the supporting characters on this show, the women were just sketches—occasionally naked ones—compared to our full-bodied detectives. The show’s major crimes involved endemic brutality against women and children, and victims is all that the women of this show remained, people against whom various wrongs were committed.
No TV show has an obligation to be everything to everyone. True Detective is a series I admired and enjoyed, and its treatment of women is not even the thing that irked me most about the finale, which left a number of niggling questions unanswered and finished on a "let there be light" riff. But it’s worth lingering on True Detective’s woman problem in part because that problem is closely, if not intentionally, tied to the show’s massive success: When it comes to prestige TV, there has yet to be a downside to out-bro-ing yourself.- Willa Paskin, “True Detective Does Have a Woman Problem. That’s Partly Why People Love It.”, Slate, (March 10, 2014)
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The Western Book of the Dead [2.1]
- Frank Semyon: Never do anything out of hunger. Not even eating.
- Eliot Bezzerides: I am not comfortable imposing my will on anyone and I haven't been since 1978.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzerides: Not even to stop them walking into a river.
- Eliot Bezzerides: Yes, not even then. And if your mother's flair for drama had been more present in her acting, she might have gone on to great things. [pause] These totems, they watch over departed spirits. I've always felt your mother among them.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzerides: You won't even own it a little.
- Eliot Bezzerides: She abandoned the two of you, I didn't. You should spend less time in a state of resistance making up problems for yourself.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzerides: What does that mean?
- Eliot Bezzerides: A failed marriage, a few relationships, you're 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, I'm 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?
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzerides: Talk to your daughter, prick. Help her.
- Eliot Bezzerides: I just did.
- Ray Velcoro: I used - I used to want to be an astronaut. But astronauts don't even go to the moon anymore.
- [Velcoro beats up the father of Aspen Conroy, a boy who bullies his son]
- Aspen Conroy: Stop!
- Ray Velcoro: Stop? Stop? I thought that got you off, kid, seeing people in pain. If you ever bully or hurt anybody again, I'll come back and butt-fuck your father with your mom's headless corpse on this goddamn lawn. Twelve years old, my ass. Fuck. You.
- Frank Semyon: A good woman mitigates our baser tendencies.
Night Finds You [2.2]
- Frank Semyon: How’d a water stain get there?
- [Camera cuts up to two brown stains on the ceiling above Frank.]
- Frank Semyon: It rained maybe twice this last year. It’s like everything’s papier-mache.
- Jordan Semyon: Stop thinking.
- Frank Semyon: I don’t like being on a ledge.
- Jordan Semyon: Nobody gets rich on their own money.
- Frank Semyon: I never really knew what to do with it. Money.
- [Camera cuts to show the outside of Frank’s house.]
- Frank Semyon: I see that about myself.
- Jordan Semyon: You always said you want lots of land.
- Frank Semyon: Yes, but you need children to leave it to. It’s never really yours. You don’t take it with you.
- Jordan Semyon: You don’t take anything with you.
- Frank Semyon: Just yourself. Whatever that was.
- Jordan Semyon: I’ve worked my whole life. Same as you. And not being poor is better than the opposite.
- Frank Semyon: My old man back in Chicago, when I was a kid… [laughs] He used to lock me in the basement when he’d go on a bender. Usually last the night. Let me out the next day. Thought he was keeping me safe, I guess. This one time, I was six - he puts me down there. I wake up and it’s locked. It had happened before. Anyways, so I guess he ended up arrested, I guess.
- Jordan Semyon: God, baby.
- 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.
- Jordan Semyon: What did you do?
- 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.
- Jordan Semyon: Sometimes I wonder how many things you have like that. That I don’t know about.
- 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.
- Jordan Semyon: What?
- 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.
- Ray Velcoro: Sometimes, a good beating provokes personal growth.
- Ray Velcoro: Somebody was looking for something. Explains the torture.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: Maybe. [glancing at Caspere's pornographic art] Guy thought about fucking a lot.
- Ray Velcoro: [about e-cigarettes] I tried one of those once. Felt like it was smoking me. Maybe it’s just a little too close to sucking a robot’s dick. I dunno.
- Ray Velcoro: What’s with all the knives?
- 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.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzerides: The fundamental difference between the sexes is that one of them can kill the other with their bare hands.
- Ray Velcoro: Well, just so you know, I support feminism, mostly by having body image issues.
Maybe Tomorrow [2.3]
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: I'm commanding officer of this detail. You call me when you got something.
- Ray Velcoro: Well, I got shot. That's something. I found our murder scene. That's something else.
- Frank Semyon: What's with the water?
- Ray Velcoro: Booze tends to take the edge off. I wanna stay angry.
- Doctor: May I ask, how much do you drink in a week?
- Ray Velcoro: All I can.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: Talk to me like that again, you’re going to need a little baggie to carry your teeth home
Down Will Come [2.4]
- Paul Woodrugh: I just don't know how to be out there in the world, man.
- Ray Velcoro: Look out that window. Look at me. Nobody does.
- Athena Bezzarides: [of her and Ani's mother] I have this memory of her, in the sand.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: Big dresses.
- Athena Bezzarides: Yeah. Polishing that driftwood 'til it shined like steel or something.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: I lost her in the light. Light off the water.
- Athena Bezzarides: Why do these memories stay so vivid? I can't even remember stuff from last week.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: Those moments, they stare back at you. You don't remember them, they remember you. Turn around, there they are, staring.
- Jordan Semyon: Here's an idea - let's be one of those couples that fights a lot. That's a fucking great idea.
- Elliot Bezzarides: [upon Ani and Ray getting up to leave] Excuse me. You have one of the largest auras I've ever seen. Green and black. It's been taking up this whole room. I just...I had to say something. You must have had hundreds of lives.
- Ray Velcoro: I don't think I could handle another one.
- [Outside of the Panticapaeum Institute]
- Ray Velcoro: What do you think "green and black" means?
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: I don’t know... you’re a mood ring?
Other Lives [2.5]
- [Ani is forced to take a sexual harassment seminar]
- Counselor: Detective Bezzarides, how do you feel about your actions?
- Detective: [to Ani] Can I just ask, what the fuck are you doing here? I mean, who wouldn't want her sexually harassing you, am I right?
- Counselor: See, right there. That kind of thing could be considered inappropriate.
- Detective: What? It's a compliment.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: It's alright, it's alright. I understand. Uh, I dunno. I mean, what can I say? [deadpan] I just really like big dicks. It's not just length. Everybody's always talking length, and it's fine, but it's girth, too. I wanna have trouble handcuffing the thing.
- Counselor: Uh... I'm not sure... that might be taken...
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: What? I thought you wanted me to share.
- Detective: Hey man, let her share!
- Mayor Austin Chessani: You deal with pimps, you get pimpish results, Frank.
- Ray Velcoro: Pain is inexhaustible. It's only people that get exhausted.
- 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 else's.
- Ernst Bodine: [showing Frank the door] Mr. Semyon.
- Frank Semyon: You don't direct me, Khe Sanh motherfucker.
- Ernst Bodine: I'm Chinese.
- Frank Semyon: Then go stand in front of a fuckin' tank.
Church in Ruins [2.6]
- [Ray has just found out that the man he killed for Frank wasn't his wife's rapist]
- Ray Velcoro: I would have been different.
- Frank Semyon: Of all the lies people tell themselves, I bet that's the most common.
- Ray Velcoro: I could have. You fucked me. I sold my soul for nothing!
- Frank Semyon: If you were selling, it wasn't me buying.
- Ray Velcoro: You wanted your hooks in a cop, so you used my wife's fucking tragedy to get me to kill somebody?
- Frank Semyon: I didn't 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. Didn't 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 I'd have done less? That's the kind of thing that keeps you out of Heaven. I don't want to go.
- 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.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: [at a crime scene] Somebody died here.
- Katherine Davis: Somebody dies every second of the day, and they're not all lucky enough to do it in California.
- Ray Velcoro: Get in, and try not to stab anyone unless you have to.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: A man of any size lays his hands on me, he's gonna bleed out in under a minute.
- Ray Velcoro: [to his wife's rapist] If they don't give you life, I will have every inch of your flesh removed with a cheese grater, starting with your prick. I'll cut off your nose and your lips, your nuts too. And I'll make sure you live. And if they do give you life, I might do it anyway.
- Frank Semyon: This is one off the bucket list - a Mexican standoff with actual Mexicans.
Black Maps and Motel Rooms [2.7]
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: He put his hands on me wrong... I've been waiting my whole life for that. I think I even went looking... That's my whole life.
- Frank Semyon: In the midst of being gang-banged by forces unseen, I figured I'd drill myself a new orifice, go on and fuck myself for a change.
- Frank Semyon: [To Mayor Chessani] Sober up, you might realize you’re getting fucked.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: Maybe, and this is just a thought, you were put on this Earth for more than fucking.
- Emily: Everything is fucking.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: He was better than us. He saved our asses, twice.
- Ray Velcoro: Three times. Now. He deserved better.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: You never asked if I did it.
- Eliot Bezzarides: It doesn't matter. You're the most innocent person I've ever known.
Omega Station [2.8]
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: [discussing her rape] Maybe he gave me something. Maybe I blocked it out. It's a black hole, an empty space, those four days. And what I remembered when I got... I got in the car. He didn't force me. He didn't even get near me. He called me pretty. I remember... I remember it made me feel... I liked... I got in a van with a stranger. Every time I remember that feeling, that pride, I get sick to my stomach. I could lie to myself, but I felt proud. I was proud that he thought I was pretty. Makes me sick.
- [Ray and Ani have just had sex]
- Ray Velcoro: I haven't been like this in a long time. Years.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: I could tell.
- Ray Velcoro: How?
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides: It seemed like you were making up for lost time.
- Police Chief Holloway: Honestly, Ray, nobody had any idea you were this competent.
- Frank Semyon: We met? You're a cop, right? Lady cop.
- Antigone "Ani" Bezzerides: What gave me away - the tits?
- Ray Velcoro: A turn here, a turn there, and it goes on for years, becomes something else. I'm 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. You're better than me. If I'd been stronger, I would've been more like you. Hell, son, if everyone was stronger, they'd be more like you.
- 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.
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The Great War and Modern Memory [3.1]
- Wayne Hays: Yeah, of course I remember.
- Jim Dobkins: Not too long ago?
- Wayne Hays: 10 years is nothin'. I remember everything.
- Jim Dobkins: Well, we can't know. What you don't remember, you don't know you don't remember.
- Wayne Hays: That's some education on semantics you're givin' me. Hey, let's skip the deposition and I'll just take notes on your lecture.
- Roland West: I'm a feminist. They want to sell me a piece of ass, they got the right. Shit. You're gonna pay for it one way or another.
- Roland West: You see yourself gettin' married, Purple?
- Wayne Hays: No, sir. I'm not a big enough asshole to put a woman and children through that.
- Alan Jones: I think it's a strong case.
- Wayne Hays: You get paid to think that, right?
- Roland West: Steve McQueen died today.
- Wayne Hays: We should do something.
- Roland West: We could go to Miss Minnie's.
- Wayne Hays: Give me a break. I can't pay for it, man.
- Roland West: It's more honest than most relationships. You never bought no Saigon trim while you was over there?
- Wayne Hays: Guess I'm a romantic.
- Roland West: I'm a feminist. If they wanna sell me a piece of ass, they got the right.
- Amelia Reardon: What is love? One name for it is knowledge.
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye [3.2]
- Alan Jones: You questioned people during this time, right?
- Wayne Hays: You know another way to do it?
- Brett Woodard: I ain't one of them burnouts. Y'know - come back and start bustin' guys up, gettin' high. And I ain't a bum. I keep a house. I pay my way.
- Wayne Hays: Hey, I ain't judgin', man. Look, I punch in and out. I put on a suit in the morning. And to be honest, I don't have much of a life.
- Brett Woodard: So why? Why punch in? Why the suit?
- Wayne Hays: I don't ask myself questions like that. Could be I'm too chicken-shit, Mr. Woodard.
- Roland West: Do you like kids generally?
- Brett Woodard: Do I-- What the fuck's the right answer to that?
- Brett Woodard: You ever been somewhere you couldn't leave, and you couldn't stay, both at the same time?
- Tom Purcell: Are we going to find Julie or what? 'Cause I can't live through this, man. Neither of us can. If we're not going to find her, I just need to know now. I can't go to sleep. And I can't wake up.
- Henry Hays: I think Mom would want you to move on, enjoy the family you got around you.
- Wayne Hays: Yeah. She and I always had different ideas. I remember that.
- [Hays and West have LaGrange handcuffed to a pole]
- Ted LaGrange: You get off on this? You got a hankerin' for cuffing white folks?
- Wayne Hays: [deadpan] Now and then, yeah.
The Big Never [3.3]
- Henry Hays: Do you remember the rest of dinner at my place? Do you remember me driving you home?
- Wayne Hays: Yeah.
- Henry Hays: Heather drove you home.
- Wayne Hays: Now we're playin' "Gotcha"?
- Doctor: Mr. Hays, your son loves you. Our only concern is for your well-being.
- Wayne Hays: [angry] I know my son loves me, doctor, but thanks for walking me through that.
- Roland West: Wayne had the idea that those kids were tellin' stories. He was correct. Ya'll fucked a good detective, there. You know that, right?
- Alan Jones: I wouldn't argue with you, but it wasn't me.
- Roland West: Probably didn't even give you shit for it when you saw him, did he?
- Alan Jones: I can't say that he did, no.
- Roland West: "Purple" Hays... my man. Tried to get him transferred over here twice. Blocked both times by Major's office. Told me not to ask again.
- Jim Dobkins: It feels like we should stay on point.
- Roland West: I'm makin' a point, son.
- Alan Jones: You see Wayne much anymore?
- Roland West: Not at all, and I don't know why.
- Alan Jones: No hard feelings, though?
- Roland West: Not between him and me. We were good friends, the way I see it. I think it was... once we stopped workin' together, we just stopped. Sometimes it's like that with people.
- Amelia Reardon: The boys couldn't stop telling me stuff. I was pretty tremendous. I think I have a future at this. [sees him reading her book] You're reading it! Finally.
- Wayne Hays: Yeah, I read it. Kept seeing my name. [pause] Are you drunk?
- Amelia Reardon: No! I had a drink at dinner. This detective took me out to eat.
- Wayne Hays: Ah. Terrific.
- Amelia Reardon: I got a lot of info from him. Listen, her fingerprints were found just in the cosmetics aisle. Looks like she was probably a customer. They have the prior week's surveillance footage. I think they're going to let me look at it.
- Wayne Hays: [angry but controlled] I didn't get any of the shit you wanted at Wal-Mart.
- Amelia Reardon: [confused] OK... did something happen? Are the kids alright?
- Wayne Hays: The kids are fine.
- Amelia Reardon': Are you alright?
- Wayne Hays: I'm fine. But one thing? One favor? [throws the book across the room] Do not come bouncing in here, half in the bag, all giddy about this shit, alright? Can you do that? Can you summon the mental resolve to shut up about this shit with me?
- Amelia Reardon: If you feel this way, you don't have to talk to me like that. You can just tell me.
- Wayne Hays: You've been told. Now, why don't you check on your kids, since you haven't seen them all day. They're supposed to be in bed.
- Amelia Reardon: Fuck off! I'm with them five times the amount you are for a job that treats you like shit!
- Wayne Hays: I don't really feel like trading curses. I said my piece.
- Amelia Reardon: I'm not gonna stop, Wayne. [leaves]
- Wayne Hays: How much do I have to lose?
- Amelia Reardon: Everything. Same as everyone else.
The Hour and the Day [3.4]
- Roland West: I don't like him. The Priest. And I know his alibi's good but... I don't like him. Man signs up to go without fuckin' for life, either he don't know himself for a liar, or he's some tight limited edition psycho, you know? I mean, everybody's fuckin' something.
- Patty: Just little things I do.
- Wayne Hays: Somebody bought 'em. Do you know who?
- Patty: Well, the last I sold these myself was at the fair in October. I'd only sold a couple and then one man bought ten off me. That was nice.
- Wayne Hays: You know who he was? You remember anything about him?
- Patty: Didn't recognize him. Negro man, like yourself. Oh, he had a dead eye. Filmy, you know, like a cataracts?
- Wayne Hays: Nothing 'bout his face besides the eye? Handsome, ugly?
- Patty: Well, like I say, uh, he was black.
- Wayne Hays: Do not talk talk shit in my face and walk away!
- Amelia Reardon: I don't wanna be around you right now.
- Wayne Hays: You want me to leave you alone, then stop talkin' shit! Because when you talk shit about me, I'm required to defend myself.
- Amelia Reardon: How can you defend yourself? You can't defend yourself because you don't know what's wrong.
- [She tries to leave, but he blocks her way]
- Wayne Hays: Does the wife in your scenario play any part in the conflict? Any role in the last 10 years?
- Amelia Reardon: Let go of me!
- Wayne Hays: Stop talkin' shit about me!
- Amelia Reardon: Or what?
- Wayne Hays: [pause] Or I'm gonna start crying.
- Amelia Reardon: [disdainful] That's a first.
- Wayne Hays: Think we can't understand each other, we're never gonna! [turns to leave]
- Amelia Reardon: Oh, great, Wayne. Walk away. Surprise, surprise.
- Wayne Hays: What do you want me to do, huh? You want to yell some more? You want me to hit you, you want me to fuck you? Just give me my orders, major!
- Amelia Reardon: I wanna finish this!
- Wayne Hays: All on your schedule, I guess! Be happy when you say, fight when you say, talk when you say, fuck every so often.
- Amelia Reardon: [pause] How about right now?
- Wayne Hays: What?
- Amelia Reardon: [removing her panties] How about right now?
- Wayne Hays: [confused but turned on] You got some major cognitive dissonance.
- Wayne Hays: Would you have done it? Would you have shot one of them?
- Roland West: If I thought it was between him and me, then no, I could give a fuck what color he was.
- Wayne Hays: You sure about that?
- Roland West: Fact that these were black folks probably gave me more pause. Mob of white people surrounds me, smashes up my ride, there'd be a lot less hesitation about what I'd do.
- Wayne Hays: Can we say this was anonymous vandals?
- Roland West: We're not going with "irate Negroes"?
- Wayne Hays: I found the spot they played in the woods. They were meeting somebody, the kids, out there. Somebody gave them toys. It's where the boy died.
- Amelia Reardon: The way Will's body was... how he saved the toys... It's almost as if there was an element of affection in it, don't you think?
- Wayne Hays: People who hurt kids think of themselves as having an affection for the children... even up to the "fuck 'em and murder 'em" part.
- Roland West: [to Freddy] I know we're a few weeks late here, but I wanted to wish you a happy 18th birthday.
- Wayne Hays: The fellas pitched in and got you life in prison, with a good possibility of choking in the gas chamber, you fuckin' shitheel little twerp.
If You Have Ghosts [3.5]
- Wayne Hays: We just wanna know if you remember anything about that night. Maybe you can take us through it again.
- Freddy Burns: You must be a stone-cold killer, huh? You're plenty tough with teenagers.
- Roland West: That night, you told us when you was alone, you saw him.
- Wayne Hays: Where was the girl? Will's sister?
- Freddy Burns: I dunno. He was all nervous, like, "I can't find my sister. I don't know where they went."
- Wayne Hays: They? He said "they"?
- Freddy Burns: I dunno, maybe he did. [sneers] You wanna slap me around a little, make sure?
- Wayne Hays: [ignoring the remark] Any indication who "they" might be?
- Freddy Burns: You can't be very good at your job, come around 10 years later and try to hang this on me.
- Roland West: No one's hanging anything on you.
- Freddy Burns: Maybe you just came here to see if you can make me piss my pants.
- Wayne Hays: [fed up] That doesn't seem like a very tall order.
- Freddy Burns: Come on then, bounce me off the walls, you black motherfucker! You think there's something you can do to me, you might wanna take another look at my life!
- Roland West: Hold on now! Mr. Burns, I understand your hard feelings, but we just needed you to remember.
- Wayne Hays: And not for nothing, things might be what they are because you need to attack and bully someone weaker than you.
- Freddy Burns: And you don't? I was a teenager. What's your excuse?
- Wayne Hays: Please explain to me all the hardships and tribulations of bein' a white man in this country.
- Roland West: Does he remember why I'm pissed at him?
- Henry Hays: No, I don't think so. Let me tell you from personal experience: it doesn't do any good.
- Roland West: Well, maybe I forgot, too.
- Roland West: Is this what you came to see me about? Twenty-five years, what, you doin' old man fantasy camp? You think you'll just roll up in here and I'll be all, "Golly gee, partner, let's grab our junior clue finders and have an adventure"? You know, in '80, we stop bein' partners, you get married... it's natural. People drift apart. This, right now? This ain't that. All this time, you never picked up the phone? You never dropped by for a beer? You never said you're fuckin' sorry, once!
- Wayne Hays: I...
- Roland West: And I was gonna put that shit aside to have a drink with you, reminisce. Maybe just watch the dogs play and the sun go fuckin' down. But look what you're doin'...
- Wayne Hays: [looking at an empty bottle on the porch] How many of those you go through a week?
- Roland West: Hey, fuck you, man! I'm fine... alone out here, no woman, no kids, and no old friends. So that means I get to drink exactly as much as I want to! You don't judge me, motherfucker! I know you. I know what you did, what I did. You talk about my drinkin'? I'd whip your ass if it wouldn't kill you! And you still ain't apologized!
- Wayne Hays: [tearing up] Roland, I don't remember. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I just can't remember. I don't... I can't... I can't remember my life, man. I can't remember my wife... I don't know. You tell me I did something wrong, I'm... I'm sorry.
- Wayne Hays: A 70-year-old black man runnin' around batshit crazy with a badge and gun. You don't wanna miss that.
- Roland West: [smiles ruefully] Well, I could use a laugh.
Hunters in the Dark [3.6]
- Wayne Hays: [after having sex with Amelia] Hell of a day when a gunfight is the second most exciting thing that happens to you.
- Roland West: We're backtracking the Purcell case. Got it down that you were the one who spotted the bag.
- Harris James: No, I was the first to think I recognized it off the APB.
- Roland West: Well, we've been wondering why it took two days to find that backpack.
- Harris James: It took God six days to make the world. I can believe it took a bunch of GEDs two days to find a backpack.
- Wayne Hays: Why did you leave Highway Patrol?
- Harris James: Why did I give up hemorrhoids and 15k a year? I dunno. That question keeps me up nights.
- Roland West: I thought it took God seven days to make the world.
- Wayne Hays: He rested on the seventh. I always thought He should have put the extra day in instead of half-assing it.
- Roland West: You're a hard man to find. Where you been?
- Dan O'Brien: Time being what it is, I imagine you boys would rather I stick to what's relevant, which is that justice might finally be done for Lucy and her kids.
- Wayne Hays: Gonna need you to make your fuckin' point, Dan.
- Dan O'Brien: My point is, Tom goin' on TV, Julie bein' alive... there are questions you can't answer without information I know.
- Roland West: You know somethin' you're not sayin', we can put you away right now.
- Wayne Hays: Or we could take you someplace and kick the hell out of you until we're convinced you're as full of shit as you look to me.
- Dan O'Brien: I want $7,000.
- Wayne Hays: I want a boat.
- Dan O'Brien: Y'know, it's clear from the news that ya'll don't any more now than you did then. You deliver to me that amount, you're gonna know a whole lot more. I imagine a whole lot of your confusion is just gonna clear right up.
- Wayne Hays: You're workin' on getting your head bounced right of that fuckin' curb.
- Dan O'Brien: I been gettin' the shit beat out of me since I was two years old.
- Wayne Hays: [to Henry] Before you ever knew me, I wasn't scared much. I wasn't a fearful man. I did things some even called brave. Ya'll made a coward of me. I've been terrified since the day you were born.
The Final Country [3.7]
- Roland West: You ain't worked a case in 10 years. Fuck's sake, Purple, what do you think this is about? Why do you think I pulled you in here?
- Wayne Hays: To find the girl and solve what happened.
- Roland West: You don't think there are better detectives around? Hey, we find the girl, great. We clear it, great. But how often does that happen? A 10-year-old case. This was me helping you get your career back, you understand? It was a favor I did.
- Wayne Hays: 'Cause I'm such a hard-luck case.
- Roland West: Keep talkin'. Keep talkin'. They're gonna put you back on Public Information, or Highway Cleanup for the next 10 years. How'd that be, huh?
- Roland West: Tom, what's doin'?
- Tom Purcell: I'm gettin' the fuck out of this place. Lucy's gone, Julie's...Julie's... You know, I thought if there was a chance, but... Ya'll say she's dead, so I'm gettin' lost.
- Roland West: What do you aim to do?
- Tom Purcell: Whatever it takes to stop feeling. I mean, there's no point. Ain't nobody left to feel anything for.
- Amelia Reardon: You ever think of moving to town?
- Margaret: Why would I do that? Somebody's got to stay. Somebody's got to remember.
- Amelia Reardon: Have you ever read In Cold Blood?
- Wayne Hays: Is that Batman or the Silver Surfer?
- Elisa Montgomery: I have to say I'm disappointed. I most wanted to talk to you because your record indicated you never went along with the official version. I was hoping you'd provide a missing piece.
- Wayne Hays: Young lady, my whole brain's a bunch of missing pieces.
- Roland West: You manipulative, egotistical, uppity fuckin'...
- Wayne Hays: What? Huh? What're you gonna say?
- Roland West: Guess what word's runnin' through my mind.
- Wayne Hays: Say it, then. Say it, motherfucker!
- Roland West: Nah. I just want you to know I'm thinkin' it.
Now Am Found [3.8]
- Edward Hoyt: Now, you bein' the law, and me an interesting party, should the two of us go out into those woods and see if we can find Harris James? And can you tell me, Mr. Hayes: Are we gonna need fuckin' shovels?
- Wayne Hays: Suppose somebody catches us.
- Raymond West: We're old and confused.
- Amelia Reardon: I'll take the hard truth over a nice lie any day.
- Biker: You got a problem, little man?
- Raymond West: No. No sir, no problem here.
- Biker: Then put your fuckin' eyes somewhere else!
- Raymond West: What it is, I'm just a fan of romance. Let me ask you a question. [looks at biker's girlfriend] Did she look like that before you rode her cross-country?
- Biker: [standing up] What the fuck did you say, you little midget?
- Raymond West: See, I always wondered, all these butt-faced pieces of garbage walkin' the earth, who's makin' 'em? I mean, what kind of Frankenstein monsters are out there copulatin' to create all these hunk of shit people in the world? Then I walk in this bar, and there's you two givin' me the answer I've been lookin' for my whole fuckin' life.
- [The biker punches hiom in the face]
- Biker: You done buckin' cowboy?
- Raymond West: Thank God it was you hit me and not that woolly mammoth you're fuckin'!
- Wayne Hays: They'll tank the case again, same as '80. I oughta quit.
- Amelia Reardon: I thought you should quit for 10 years.
- Wayne Hays: Why?
- Amelia Reardon: Why? Why wouldn't I want you to quit? I don't think you realize this Wayne: You could have been good at just about anything. But what you think you are made you stuck.
- Wayne Hays: I done pulled my head outta my ass in regards to you. Maybe you didn't mean it all the way, maybe it just happened, but you was workin' me. Always askin' questions, always talkin' about the case...
- Amelia Reardon: That's not what I did. You know that's not what I did.
- Wayne Hays: No I don't! But I just about decided that you don't really know what you're up to most of the time, do you? Bein' a good-lookin' woman like you are, I mean, people don't really expedct you to take responsibility. You're just like a pretty bird, flyin' around and shittin' on people's heads. Well, I don't need one of them! I was doin' real good without no head-shittin' birds around here!
- Amelia Reardon: What if there's another story? What if something went unbroken? All this life, all this loss - what if it's really one long story that kept going and going until it healed itself? Wouldn't that be a story worth telling? Wouldn't that be a story worth hearing?
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Season 1
- Matthew McConaughey - Detective Rustin "Rust" Cohle
- Woody Harrelson - Detective Martin "Marty" Hart
- Michelle Monaghan - Maggie Hart
- Michael Potts - Detective Maynard Gilbough
- Tory Kittles - Detective Thomas Papania
- Kevin Dunn - Major Ken Quesada
- Alexandra Daddario - Lisa Tragnetti
- Charles Halford - Reginald "Reggie" Ledoux
- Jay O. Sanders - Billy Lee Tuttle
- Glenn Fleshler - Errol William Childress
- Elizabeth Reaser - Laurie Perkins
- Lili Simmons - Beth
Season 2
- Colin Farrell - Detective Ray Velcoro
- Vince Vaughn - Frank Semyon
- Rachel McAdams - Detective Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides
- Taylor Kitsch - Officer Paul Woodrugh
- Kelly Reilly - Jordan Semyon
- Ritchie Coster - Mayor Austin Chassani
- Lolita Davidovich - Nancy Spencer
- James Frain - Lieutenant Kevin Burris
- Timothy Spencer - Osip Agronov
- W. Earl Brown - Detective Teague Dixon
- Afemo Omilani - Police Chief Holloway
- Christopher James Baker - Blake Churchman
- David Morse - Eliot Bezzarides
- Michael Hyatt - Katherine Davis
Season 3
- Mahershala Ali - Detective Wayne Hays
- Carmen Ejogo - Amelia Reardon
- Stephen Dorff - Detective Roland West
- Scoot McNairy - Tom Purcell
- Mamie Gummer - Lucy Purcell
- Ray Fisher - Henry Hays
- Michael Greyeyes - Brett Woodard
- Scott Shepherd - Harris James
- Josh Hopkins - Jim Dobkins
- Jon Tenney - Alan Jones
- Sarah Gadon - Elisa Montgomery
- Steven Williams - Junius
- Rhys Wakefield - Freddy Burns
- Michael Graziadei - Dan O'Brien
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- True Detective quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- True Detective at TV.com
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