David Harbour Quotes

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

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

My manager sent me the first two scripts for 'True Detective,' and I just thought they were so interesting and that the world they were depicting was so titillating to me.

'The Wire,' I was such a fan of that show the first season - I think that's the best-written show on TV.

That's what everyone said attracted them to Lantana - I call it an adult mystery, because it's not a thriller in the sense of that other way, but it is a mystery.

'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.

When I watch cop shows, I really enjoy them because you can really follow the story and get involved, and the characters are always really interesting.

I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting.

'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.

With a thriller, you're going to have your red herrings, as different suspects are thrown up as possible culprits. You can only explore that for so long - if you do that more than a few times, it starts to get a little redundant.

I said from the start I had to be trustful of the Millennium universe. It was not going to be a Stieg Larsson book, but my interpretation of his iconic characters and universe.

Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.

I think 'Pretty Little Liars' is going to be hugely popular for adults, for kids, for girls, for guys, you know, something for everyone to look at, and the stories are going to be great. There's suspense every week. The friendship is really fun to watch. I think it's going to have something for everybody.

I love mysteries on television - the more psychologically complex, the better.

I was so obsessed by Lisbeth Salander and all the characters, but of course if you're going to write a crime novel worthy of Stieg Larsson, you need a plot, don't you?

As I work, I see my writing - each scene, each chapter, each section, each book - in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story.

'The Wire' was a combination of great TV and great theater.

I loved Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's 'Inside No 9.' The way that they constrained each episode to a single location, then tasked themselves with including completely new characters every week, within a single half-hour.

I love 'Game of Thrones' and 'Breaking Bad.'

I think it's more interesting to throw people into a story and let them catch up instead of explaining and feeling like you have to slow down for them. I think audiences, for the most part, they don't want to be ahead of you.

I don't think I'd seen anything like 'The Killing.'

The original and very basic 'Law & Order' series has always seemed to me to be 100-percent exposition, with no filler, no pesky nuances and almost no background about the series' continuing characters - just the hard nuts and bolts of pure storytelling.

There are a lot of shows that have secrets and string people along and use the secrets of the narrative engine to keep people coming back every week. I don't know if those programs even have an answer. I don't know how they build their shows.

I'm a huge David Fincher fan, and to me, 'Zodiac' is a masterpiece. I re-watch that movie all the time.

Usually when you're doing a season one, you're trying to find the show.