Det. Rustin Cohle: “What do you think the average I.Q. of this group is, huh?”

Det. Martin Hart: “Can you see Texas there in your high horse? What do you know about these people?”

Cohle: “Just observation and deduction. I see a propensity for obesity, poverty, a yen for fairy tales. Folks putting the few bucks they do have in little wicker baskets being passed around. I think it’s safe to say that nobody here’s going to be splitting the atom, Marty.”

Hart: “You see that? Your fucking attitude. Not everybody wants to sit alone in an empty room, beatin’ off to murder manuals. Some folks enjoy community. Common good.”

Cohle: “Yeah, well, if the common good’s gotta make up fairy tales then it’s not good for anybody.”

Hart: “I mean, can you imagine if people didn’t believe? What would be the things they’d get up to?”

Cohle: “The exact same things they get up to now. Just out in the open.”

Hart: “Bull…shit. It’d be a fucking freak show of murder and debauchery, and you know it.”

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 out in the open as possible.”

Hart: “Well I guess your judgement is infallible, piece-of-shit-wise. Do you think that notebook is a stone tablet?”

Cohle: “What’s it say about life? Hmm? You gotta get together and tell yourselves stories that violate every law in the universe just to get through the goddamn day. What’s that say about your reality, Marty?”

Hart: “When you get to talkin’ like this, you sound panicked.”

Cohle: “Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel is catharsis. He [the preacher] 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 re-writes pathways in the brain, dulls critical thinking.”

Hart: “Well, I don’t use $10 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.”

Cohle: “At least I’m not racing to a red light.”

(True Detective s01e03 – “The Locked Room”)