True Detective (TV Series)

Seeing Things (2014)

Matthew McConaughey: Detective Rust Cohle

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Quotes 

• Detective 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.

• Detective 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.

• Detective Rust Cohle : Yeah, back then, the visions, yeah most of the time I was convinced... Shit... I'd lost it. But there were other times... I thought I was mainlining the secret truth of the universe.

• Detective Rust Cohle : Think of the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of nonexistence into this... meat, to force a life into this... thresher. That's... so my daughter, she spared me the sin of being a father.

• Lucy : What's your deal?

  Detective Rust Cohle : I don't have "a deal".

  Lucy : I mean, what do you do? Nevermind, I thought you were gonna bust me.

  Detective Rust Cohle : I told you, I'm not interested.

  Lucy : Yeah, I know. You're kinda strange, like you might be dangerous.

  Detective Rust Cohle : Of course I'm dangerous. I'm police. I can do terrible things to people with impunity.

• Detective Rust Cohle : You know me. I don't see the connection between two dead cats and a murdered woman...

  [pause] 

  Detective Rust Cohle : But I'm from Texas...

• Detective Rust Cohle : Came close another time... Lorry. 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] 

  Detective Rust Cohle : 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.

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

  Detective Rust Cohle : Well, I can't say the job made me this way. More like bein' 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... 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.

• Detective Maynard Gilbough : Now what do you mean exactly... these visions you mentioned.

  Detective Rust Cohle : Oh shit, I thought you knew. I told Marty about 'em... you know... down the line. uh... chemical... flashbacks... neural damage... from my time in the HIDTA... as in High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. I spent 4 years under cover.

  [laughs] 

  Detective Rust Cohle : You know what that means? That's where they got them Fed rumors I first come in. What you two don't know 'bout them? Those files are still sealed huh? Shiiiiit, just what have you two heard about me?

• [after Marty gives money to a young prostitute] 

  Detective Rust Cohle : That a down payment?

  Detective Marty Hart : Is shitting on any moment of decency part of your job description?

• [Rust sniffs] 

  Detective Marty Hart : What?

  Detective Rust Cohle : You wash up. You got some pussy on ya.

  Detective Marty Hart : Key to a healthy marriage.

  Detective Rust Cohle : Oh, that's Maggie, uh?

  Detective Marty Hart : Hey! What's with your fucking nose?

  Detective Rust Cohle : Nothing, man. Sorry, forget it.

  Detective Marty Hart : I get a connotation being implied here... about my wife?

  Detective Rust Cohle : Are you saying that's wife? That high tide you're walking in with?

  Detective Marty Hart : [angrily slams Rust into a locker]  You got some idea how my wife's pussy is supposed to smell?

  Detective Rust Cohle : No, I just meant you're wearing the same clothes as you did yesterday...

  [slowly grabs Martin's wrists] 

  Detective Rust Cohle : Coupled with the fact that I ain't stupid. Wasn't making no comment as to the particularity of the scent.

  Detective Marty Hart : You don't say fuck-all about my wife... don't say her name!

  Detective Rust Cohle : You got some self loathing to do this morning, that's fine, but it ain't worth losing your hands over.

  Detective Marty Hart : How would that work exactly?

  Detective Rust Cohle : I'd just apply a couple of pounds of pressure...

  [tightens the grip on Martin's wrists] 

  Detective Rust Cohle : Snap your wrists. You're senior detective. Think I'm lying?

• Detective Rust Cohle : She articulated a person with vision. Vision is meaning. Meaning is historical.

• Detective Rust Cohle : Back then, not sleepin', I lay awake thinkin' about women, my daughter, my wife... I mean, it's like somethin's got your name on it, like a bullet or a nail in the road...

  [long pause] 

  Detective Rust Cohle : Shit, sorry, I drift... sometimes when I've had a few. That's why I like to drink alone. One of the reasons anyway.

• Detective Rust Cohle : Days with nothing... that's what it's like you work cases. Days like lost dogs.

  Detective Marty Hart : It goes on like that, you know the job. you're looking for narrative... uh... interrogate witnesses... parcel evidence... establish a timeline... build story... day after day.