25 Great Rust Cohle Quotes For True Detective Fans

Rustin Spencer 'Rust' Cohle is a peculiar detective investigating homicides in Louisiana state for 17 years.

Matthew McConaughey plays the role of Rust Cohle in season 1. Another protagonist of the show is called Marty Hart, played by Woody Harrelson.

Both these roles were critically acclaimed and were nominated for multiple awards, including Golden Globes. Fun trivia about this popular role is that Matthew McConaughey was first offered the role of Marty Hart but, after reading the script, Matthew went back to the makers and suggested that it would be appropriate if he played the character of Rust Cohle instead and that's how this iconic role came to life.

If you enjoy reading these quotes, check out 'True Detective' quotes and Detective quotes for more such quotes.
 

Rust Cohle is shown to be a non-believer of god or religion and can be seen sharing his opinion about people's beliefs and behaviors in a straightforward way without any hesitation. Here are some intriguing dialogues from the show.

1. "I see a propensity for obesity. Poverty. A yearn for fairy tales. Folks puttin’ what few bucks they do have into a little wicker basket being passed around. I think it’s safe to say nobody here’s gonna be splitting the atom, Marty."

-Rust Cohle.

2. "People incapable of guilt usually do have a good time."

-Rust Cohle.

3. "I think human consciousness, is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody."

-Rust Cohle.

4. "There is no such thing as forgiveness. People just have short memories."

-Rust Cohle.

5. "You gotta get together and tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the goddamn day? What’s that say about your reality?"

-Rust Cohle.

6. "People… I have seen the finale of thousands of lives, man. Young, old, each one so sure of their realness. You know that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual with purpose and meaning. So certain that they were more than biological puppet. The truth wills out, and everybody sees. Once the strings are cut, all fall down."

-Rust Cohle.

Rust's role appears to be troubled yet very dedicated to his job. He has an exceptional ability to get criminals confessed and carries around a big book to make notes, and everyone calls him a "the Tax man" jokingly. Find some of his views on death and more here.

7. "To realize that all your life—you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain—it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream. A dream that you had inside a locked room. A dream about being a person. And like a lot of dreams there's a monster at the end of it."

-Rust Cohle.

8. "In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So death created time to grow the things that it would kill... and you are reborn but into the same life that you've always been born into."

-Rust Cohle.

9. "The newspapers are gonna be tough on you. And prison is very, very hard on people who hurt kids. If you get the opportunity, you should kill yourself."

-Rust Cohle.

10. "This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading. It's like there was never anything here but jungle."

-Rust Cohle.

11. "You know, people that give me advice, I reckon they're talking to themselves."

-Rust Cohle.

12. "Well, once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light's winning."

-Rust Cohle.

13. "Life’s barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you get good at."

-Rust Cohle.

14. "I sure hope that old lady was wrong. About death not being the end of it."

-Rust Cohle.

15. "I tell myself I bear witness. But the real answer is that it's obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide."

-Rust Cohle.

16. "And you could just let go. Finally know that you didn’t have to hold on so tight."

-Rust Cohle.

17. "Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight - brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal."

-Rust Cohle.

Although Rust Cohle talks very little throughout the season, being true to his character, once in a while, he says things that get everyone's attention. Here are some interesting quotes.

18. "The world needs bad men. We keep other bad men from the door."

-Rust Cohle.

19. "If the common good has got to make up fairy tales, then it’s not good for anybody."

-Rust Cohle.

20. "Time is a flat circle. Everything we've ever done or will do, we're gonna do over and over and over again."

-Rust Cohle.

21. "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."

-Rust Cohle.

22. "Look, I'd consider myself a realist, all right? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist."

-Rust Cohle.

23. "Given how long it's taken for me to reconcile my nature, I can't figure I'd forgo it on your account, Marty."

-Rust Cohle.

24. "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."

-Rust Cohle.

25. "I know who I am. And after all these years, there’s a victory in that."

-Rust Cohle.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Rust Cohle quotes then why not take a look at ['Brooklyn 99' quotes], or Sherlock Holmes quotes.