- 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 Marty Hart: That girl's not 18. Sheriff know you got under age 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?
- Detective 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.
- Detective 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.
- 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?
- Jake Herbert: So you're telling me the world isn't getting worse? I've seen kids today all in black wearing makeup, shit on their faces, everything is sex, Clinton.
- Detective Marty Hart: You know, throughout history, I bet every old man probably said the same thing. And old men die, and the world keeps spinnin'.
- [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.
- Lisa Tragnetti: You just want your cake and to eat it too.
- Detective Marty Hart: What the hell good is cake if you can't eat it?
- 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.
- Detective Marty Hart: You miss some things on the job. You know what I mean. You gotta decompress before you can go bein' a family man. What you get into... workin'... you can't have the kids around that. So, uh, sometimes you gotta get your "head right".
- Lisa Tragnetti: Don't move a muscle.
- Detective Marty Hart: I shan't. Just the fingers. The finger muscles.
- [Lisa is bent over and Marty tries to pull Lisa's pink shorts down]
- Lisa Tragnetti: Stop.
- [Lisa pulls her shorts back up and pushes him onto the couch]
- Lisa Tragnetti: You're very naughty.
- Lisa Tragnetti: You have the right to remain silent.
- [Martin chuckles]
- Lisa Tragnetti: Anything you say, can and will be held against you in a court of law.
- [she handcuffs him to the bed]
- Lisa Tragnetti: You have a right to attorney, if you can't afford an attorney; the state will provide you one.
- [as she straddles him]
- Lisa Tragnetti: Do you understand your rights?
- Detective Marty Hart: Oh, you definitely have a career in law informant.
- [she chuckles]
- Detective Marty Hart: Oh, I thought I was gonna put these on you.
- Lisa Tragnetti: [she starts to pull her shirt up] You want this?
- Detective Marty Hart: Yeah.
- Lisa Tragnetti: Yeah? You want it?
- Detective Marty Hart: Yes.
- [Lisa takes her shirt off reveling her huge boobs, she gets off him and bends over and shows him her ass]