Quotes About Manipulation

The one consistent thing about psychopaths was their ego. They never imagined getting caught because they believed they were smarter than everyone.

People converted by fear-mongering are people converted from evil, not to the truth.

Always remember, you don't need bad people to get bad deeds done. All you need is somebody clever enough to convince good people that a nefarious policy is actually the greatest thing since the pop-up toaster. As I have frequently observed, most of the serious evils in the world have been done in the name of good.

To fool somebody else, you have to fool yourself first.

he most effective lie is ninety-nine percent true.

The most effective lie is ninety-nine percent true.

How easy it was to capitalize on a person's own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.

She hadn't needed her own lawyer to point out that Matthew appeared to be trying to force her to spend money she didn't have on legal wrangling, to run down the clock and her resources until she walked away with as close to nothing as he could manage.

Strike had long since come to believe that she engineered situations out of an apparently insatiable need for conflict.

abduct Peggy Hiskett, he wasn't the Essex Butcher,

Maybe (she was deliberately inflaming her own resentment now, and she knew it)

She's like that, always shifting the goalposts. What was right one minute was wrong the next. You had to walk on eggshells, you really did.

Her antipathy towards Strike seemed to have evaporated. He was not surprised; he had met the phenomenon many times. People liked to talk; there were very few exceptions; the question was how you made them do it. Some, and Ursula was evidently one of them, were amenable to alcohol; others liked a spotlight; and then there were those who merely needed proximity to another conscious human being.

he was an evil, amoral bastard who told everyone he met he was an evil, amoral bastard and what happened? Women fell over themselves to get at him.

How easy it was to capitalise on a person's own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.

Good though his eyesight was, however, he would have been unlikely to spot the Stanley knife being turned rhythmically between long, fine fingers.

mythomania, her need to provoke, to taunt, to test.

becos he fucks with people's heads. He's a control freak. he doesn't like anyone having relationships that don't involve him. Either you're a suck up like Hartella or you end up getting kicked out. Ive only lasted this long because he needs me

Owen liked me," Waldegrave told Strike. "Oh yeah. I knew how to handle him. Stoke that man's vanity and you could get him to do anything you wanted. Half an hour's praise before you asked him to change anything in a manuscript. 'Nother half hour's praise before you asked him to make another change. Only way.

He's got a tame psychiatrist ready to say I'm crazy and unstable, and he's hoping to get me certified drug-addled and promiscuous to boot. Ruining you will just be an extra bit of fun.' 'You told me you couldn't wait to leave your fucking kids while you were pregnant with them.

Qué fácil era sacar provecho de la inclinación de una persona por la autodestrucción, qué sencillo impulsarla a la no existencia y, después, alejarse, encogerse de hombros y decir que había sido el inevitable resultado de una vida caótica y catastrófica.

You have to break it, because if you don't, it might fade away. You've got to be in control. If you kill it, you don't have to watch it die

The trouble with altering the facts to fit the picture is that it's a cumulative exercise. It starts as a game — a bit of a lark really. Then it gets serious, then complicated, then . . . then pleasure becomes pain because you find yourself and everyone else believing the charade — living the lie as if it were the truth.

He would move from city to city as he had always done, using people, soiling them like sheets and walking away, to find fresh faces and new diversions.