Quotes from Jon Ronson

they saw how well behaved I was, and decided it meant I could only behave well in the environment of a psychiatric hospital and it proved I was mad." I

The communist looked very pleased with himself — for being a communist and for being hit by Alex. It was exasperating. Alex had been within feet of me and I hadn't known it until he'd hit a communist and was bustled away, and it was too late.

On the outside, Tony said, not wanting to spend time with your criminally insane neighbors would be a perfectly understandable position. But on the inside it demonstrates you're withdrawn and aloof and you have a grandiose sense of your own importance.

Psychologists try and remind anxiety sufferers that 'what if' worries are irrational ones. If you find yourself thinking, 'What if I just came across as racist?' the 'what if' is evidence that nothing bad actually happened. It's just thoughts swirling frantically around.

They wrote in their reports that it proved him to be "cunning" and "manipulative" and also that he was suffering from "cognitive distortion" because he didn't believe he was mad.     Tony

Tony said just being here can be enough to turn someone crazy.

Why is the world so unfair? Why all that savage economic injustice, those brutal wars, the everyday corporate cruelty? The answer: psychopaths. That part of the brain that doesn't function right.

These depictions of a broken America were also highly selective. When Ted Cruz listed the various ways Americans "have had their lives destroyed" — by terrorists, or police officers cut down in the line of duty, he pointedly excluded stories of innocent black people shot by the police.

Stone's beliefs, I later discovered, were just as crazy as Alex's. He

I suppose he was being rewarded so richly because his messages were inspirational. My talks tend to be more disincentivizing, which, I have noticed, pays less.

Whereas shame let out can lead to freedom, or at least to a funny story, which is a sort of freedom too.

shameworthiness lies in the space between who we are and how we present ourselves to the world

if a person was overcome by a violent madness he'd involuntarily start to sound like someone from Louisiana.

if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

Oh, Ronson's all right," Alex told him. "I'm sure he's planning some form of sophisticated hit piece, but I don't care. It's always artfully done so it goes back and forth, you know." "Why is he wearing a snow jacket in 90-degree heat?" Stone muttered to Alex.

partners in a lobbying firm with a client list that included a great many murderous dictators. Like

It is a frightening and huge thought," I said, "that the ninety-nine percent of us wandering around down here are having our lives pushed and pulled around by that psychopathic fraction up there." "It

He said I really had to be careful. Psychopaths are truly dangerous, he said. And they're often the people you least expect them to be. "When

After the interview ended, Stone and I were ushered out. Alex had an interview with Ted Nugent to conduct. In the elevator, Stone scrutinized me. "When we try to assess threats," he said, "the kooks are almost always wearing snowsuits in 90-degree weather.

Tony faked mental illness. That's when you have hallucinations and delusions. Mental illness comes and goes. It can get better with medication. Tony is a psychopath. That doesn't come and go. It is how the person is." Faking

The judge took one look at it and threw it out. He said the honey trap was "deceptive conduct of the grossest kind"; the idea of "a psychological profile being admissible as proof of identity in any circumstances [was] redolent with considerable danger." And

It felt like the people on Twitter had been invited to be characters in a courtroom drama, and had been allowed to choose their roles, and had all gone for the part of the hanging judge.

after his lawyer argued that given the passage of time, he wouldn't have a fair hearing. He became a pariah in the offender-profiling world. Now

Is Obama satanic?" he asked me. I was grateful for the conversation starter — I consider anything that staves off social awkwardness to be a blessing — but I couldn't lie.