Nic Pizzolatto Quotes

Certain experiences you can't survive, and afterward you don't fully exist, even if you failed to die.

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

We come here to tell stories so that we can manage the past without being swallowed by it.

Some people. Something happens to them. Usually when they're young. And they never get any better.

I've found that all weak people share a basic obsession - they fixate on the idea of satisfaction. Anywhere you go men and women are like crows drawn by shiny objects. For some folks, the shiny objects are other people, and you'd be better off developing a drug habit.

I knew the past wasn't real. It was only an idea, and the thing I'd wanted to touch, to brush against, the feeling I couldn't name - it just didn't exist. It was only an idea, too.

You’re here because it’s somewhere. Dogs pant in the streets. Beer won’t stay cold. The last new song you liked came out a long, long time ago, and the radio never plays it anymore.

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

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

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

The past isn't real.

Something passed close to me then, a feeling or piece of knowledge, but I couldn't quite get it. A sense of something I'd once known or felt, a memory that wouldn't come into the light. I kept reaching, but I couldn't grasp the thing. It felt near, though.

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

Still, there was a bored sadness to her. And a resignation I’d seen on faces my whole life—people giving up, crossing over to that place without struggle—and I wanted to alter that.

You’re born and forty years later you hobble out a bar, startled by your own aches. Nobody knows you. You steer down lightless highways, and you invent a destination because movement is key. So you head toward the last thing you have left to lose, with no real idea what you’re going to do with it.

When I read I got involved in the words and what they were saying so that I didn't measure the passing of time in typical ways. I was surprised to learn that there was this freedom made of nothing but words. Then I felt like I had missed some crucial point, a long time ago.

I remember a buddy of mine once telling me that every woman you loved was a mother and sister you didn't have, at once, and that what you were always really looking for was the female part of yourself, your female animal or something. This guy could get away with saying something like that because he was a junkie and read books.

Clarity, I think, is the chief thing. Find a road and walk it.

You look less suspicious when you're willing to meet people.

In this climate all things seek shade, and so a basic quality of the Deep South is that everything here is partially hidden.

I think the reason men liked her was because she gave off high levels of carnality. You looked at her and just knew - this one's up for anything. It's sexy, but you can't really stand it.

Now and then she looked harassed by her own potential, like certain young people, and you might notice then the way a stillness spread through her eyes, and her unguarded face forgot to play a role, just look stunned by confusion and remorse, while the features of this face were organized by a kind of country pride that wouldn't admit confusion or remorse.

I’d known dudes like this my whole life, country morons stuck in a state of permanent resentment. They abuse small animals, grow up to beat their kids with belts and wreck their trucks driving drunk, find Jesus at forty and start going to church and using prostitutes.

So I was wrong when I told Rocky you could choose what you feel. It's not true. It's not even true that you can choose when you'll feel. All that happens is that the past clots like a cataract or scab, a scab of memory over your eyes. And one day the light breaks through.

She reminded me of the empty glass of a swallowed cocktail, and at the heart of the empty glass was a smashed lime rind on ice.

For both of us the landscape had a gravity that tugged us backward in time, possessed us with people we used to be.

I was worried I’d live forever.

You steer down lightless highways, and you invent a destination because movement is key.

actual army, because I’d used a knife to cut little strips out of the can sides so that they folded down, like arms, and I’d pulled the tops upright to resemble heads. I’d done all that while watching Fort Apache,

Martin Hart: Can I ask you something? You're a Christian, yeah? Rustin Cohle: No. Martin Hart: Well, whadaya got the cross for, in your apartment? Rustin Cohle: It's a form of meditation. Martin Hart: How's that? Rustin Cohle: I contemplate the moment in the garden; the idea of allowing your own crucifixion.

She sipped her drink and the ends of her lips curled, stamped two dimples on her cheeks, and in her smile flashed the danger of momentum, of riding hard with no plan. But I didn't need a plan, only movement. Like the purest assassin, I was already dead.

For the rest of the day, her weight echoed in my empty hands, light but dense, her throes and kicks.

If I give her the truth, then maybe I am released of its obligations. I can pass the truth to its rightful owner, and the frozen stars in my chest might finally ignite.

What I came to see later was that I was asking her to convince me, to give me an excuse. Like an unmade part of me saw its chance to be born.

She was weak, a clever woman who willed herself stupid.

Back then it felt like life was not just one thing; it could be other things. Then one day it felt like the exact opposite; life was one thing and one thing only, a wait.

Eventually you’ve got to understand that an answer isn’t the same thing as a solution, and a story is sometimes only an excuse. —Nic Pizzolatto

Now you might picture your next story, your second one, but don't be too definite, don't make a vision you might cling to, or create an idea you lose yourself in. Don't look at a map and ponder the depth of the Yellow Sea; don't imagine the shapes of its waves. Don't contemplate lost parents or lost girls. Resist the urge to explain their stories, because eventually you've got to understand that an answer isn't the same thing as a solution, and a story is sometimes only an excuse.

Vision is meaning. Meaning is historical.

Some seagulls strutted the parking lot with a kind of haughty entitlement that made me think of clergy.

The sensation of a thing forgotten but resonating.

The long red hair was feminine on his slight frame and his features were all about deprivation, angles of want. But maybe that beggary tugged some sympathy from me, because I remembered how hard I worked not to seem scared at his age.

An army of empty High Life cans covered the floor around the chair—an actual army, because I’d used a knife to cut little strips out of the can sides so that they folded down, like arms, and I’d pulled the tops upright to resemble heads.

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... 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.

Depending on the places we passed, the night around us shaded from ink black to red to purple to a washed-out yellow that hung like gauze in front of the dark, like you could see the dark sitting under the light, and then it would be back to ink black, and the air would change smells from sea salt to pine pulp to ammonia and burning oil. Trees and marshland crowded us and we passed over the Atchafalaya Basin, a long bridge suspended over a liquid murk, and I thought about the dense congestion of vines and forest when I was a kid, how the green and leafy things had seemed so full of shadows, and how it had felt like half the world was hidden in those shadows.

Toda la gente débil comparte una obsesión básica: una fijación por la idea de la complacencia. Vayas a donde vayas, los hombres y las mujeres son como cuervos atraídos por los objetos resplandescientes. Para algunos, los objetos resplandescientes codiciados son otras personas, y antes que caer en esto más te valdría hacerte adicto a las drogas. Algo se convierte en demasiado placentero, demasiado importante, y antes de que te des cuenta estás atrapado.

-No parece justo porque es cosa del azar. Pero precisamente por eso es justo. ¿Entiendes qué quiero decir? Es justo como lo es la lotería.

the heavy way her lids sat on her eyes spoke to very specific things.

I knew the past wasn't real. It was only an idea, and the thing I'd wanted to touch, to brush against, the feeling I couldn't name -- it just didn't exist. It was only an idea, too.

They had gentle, amused faces, carried hunched backs with the dignity of quiet burdens.

I deemed the weather offensive, the way the air lay on me like a giant tongue, clammy, warm and gritty as embers.

One day you might find cause to ask yourself what the limit is to some pain you're experiencing and you'll find out there is no limit at all. Pain is inexhaustible. It's only people that get exhausted

I tried to conceive of not existing, but I didn’t have the imagination for it.

In my education it seemed I was always being told to mistrust plot as a phony conceit that betrayed and warped literary art. This, of course, is total bullshit, one of the more useless remnants of so-called modernism. The truth is that life breaks down into plot quite neatly when we choose to see it that way, and narrative is one of the most fundamental human instincts there is.

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

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home. —William Faulkner

Static filled the television’s noise, and the voices from it sounded like endless newspapers being crushed.

If I give her the truth, then maybe I am released of its obligations. I can pass the truth to its rightful owner, and the frozen stars in my chest might finally ignite.

Rossitto once said, “The easiest thing in the world is not to work.

[The Villagers tell Chris they collected everything of value in their village to hire gunmen] Chris Adams: I have been paid a lot for my work, but never everything.

I’ve found that all weak people share a basic obsession—they fixate on the idea of satisfaction. Anywhere you go men and women are like crows drawn by shiny objects. For some folks, the shiny objects are other people, and you’d be better off developing a drug habit.

The past isn’t real.

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

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

—¿Has estado alguna vez en Galveston? —le pregunté. Ella negó con la cabeza.

En algún momento tendrás que comprender que una respuesta y una solución no son la misma cosa, y a veces una historia no es más que una excusa.

Sú veci, ktoré neprežijete, hoci vás nezabijú.