Success Is Always Less Funny Than Failure.

Corporate And Political And Religious Psychopaths Ruin Economies. They Ruin Societies.

We Have To Understand How The Extremists Got The Way They Are. Without That Kind Of Understanding, We'd Never Really Get To Know Them. I Put In Nothing About Their Childhoods. But What I Have Put In Is Stuff About The Weird Symbiotic Relationship Between Us And Them.

As I Glanced At The Phraseology Of The Research Report, Dull And Unfathomable To Outsiders Like Me, I Thought That 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.

When I Asked Robert Spitzer About The Possibility That He'd Inadvertently Created A World In Which Ordinary Behaviours Were Being Labelled Mental Disorders, He Fell Silent. I Waited For Him To Answer. But The Silence Lasted Three Minutes. Finally He Said, 'i Don't Know.

In The Midst Of A Burning-hot Shaming, Calling For Patience And Context And Understanding And Empathy Can Really Land You In Trouble.