User:MakersMark73/sandbox

Influences
In an online article Pizzolatto has cited Nietzche, EM Cioran, HP Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti as being instrumental in the worldview of the character Rust Cohle. Two lines specifically from the first episode echo Ligotti's wording, and Cohle's philosophy is similar to the one outlined in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. While he recommends samples of weird fiction to readers in the same article, he does not cite them as influences. Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow is referenced through the methodology and language of the serial killer being hunted, and due to the show's popularity the book was put in Amazon.com's top ten sales ranking by viewers. Pizzolatto spoke directly to what Chambers' ideas meant for the story in an Entertainment Weekly interview. In the same article, he describes David Milch, David Simon, David Chase and Michael Mann as influences, as well as William Faulkner, Dashiell Hammett, and the British TV show The Sweeney. He has also cited Dennis Potter's 'The Singing Detective', Playhouse 90, The Twilight Zone, and The Untouchables as early television touchstones. In a 2010 interview with the Louisville-Courier, Pizzolatto says that as a child, reading comic books by Grant Morrison and Alan Moore were some of the first things that inspired him to be a writer. There has been online speculation as to the show's influences based on individual viewers' interpretations of the series, but these are the only confirmed statements of the author.