“'True Detective' was the last show I got crazy about, with its 'Silenc...” — Irvine Welsh Quote

'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.

I don't want everything to be flowery perfection. I like it there to be a charge behind it, you know?

I left Edinburgh to follow the London punk scene in 1978, singing and playing guitar in various bands. My income was sporadic, so I did anything to eke out some kind of subsistence - laying down slabs, working as a kitchen porter.

How can you be inspired by Cameron and Miliband? These guys are just drabness personified.

So many people have become divorced from the system, criminalised by their lifestyle.

I particular enjoy the crime writer, Walter Ellis Mosley. He does a series of Chandler-esque detective stories.

Definitely, 'True Detective' was a great example of one director, one story. It worked fantastically well. Well, I thought it worked fantastically well; I know a lot people didn't.

Nick Fear was just a ridiculous name I'd been kicking around when thinking about writing some detective stories.

I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

The thought of playing a New York detective scared the hell out of me. I didn't know if people would believe me in the role just because of my physicality, which made me want to do it even more.