Jon Ronson Quotes - Page 2

Sometimes labeling is only useful, like with OCD. Once you're labeled you can be treated. On other occasions labeling leads to tyranny, like with childhood bipolar disorder in the U.S.

Oh, you know what bloggers are like, they write and write and write. I don't know why, because they're not being paid.

A strange thing happens when you interview a robot. You feel an urge to be profound: to ask profound questions. I suppose it’s an inter-species thing. Although if it is I wonder why I never try and be profound around my dog. ‘What does electricity taste like?’ I ask. ‘Like a planet around a star,’ Bina48 replies. Which is either extraordinary or meaningless - I’m not sure which

Discover the time of day when you write best, and write then. For me it's about 7 am to noon. For other people it's overnight. Try not to do anything other than write between those times.

I write funny nonfiction adventure books about crazy, serious worlds.

I think if somebody is so set in their ways about what they feel about something - and you get this a lot in academia, of course, and also different sorts of journalism too - you're going to sweep under the carpet the facts that don't suit your thesis. And I think that happens quite a lot in the courtroom, for instance.

I wasn't in any way a kind of soothsayer or not surprised when Sept. 11 happened. I was absolutely shocked.

No, people back home don't realize why there is this kind of need for heroes in America at the moment. People in Britain don't really understand what's going on here. They don't understand why Camp X-ray exists.

Trying to solve the mystery is what I enjoy most about writing.

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.

Obviously, I like to write stories that are page-turners. But I always try my very, very hardest to be as factually true as possible.

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.

Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!

Guy Savelli's role in the War on Terror began when half-a-dozen strangers, within days of one another, contacted him via e-mail and telephone in the winter of 2003. They asked him if he had the power to psychically kill goats. Guy was bewildered. He did not go around publicizing this. Who were these men? How did they know about the goats? He feigned a casual tone of voice and said, 'Sure I can.'Then he phoned Special Forces.

At first, I did stories on people who were maybe just eccentric. Omar was a natural progression from that.

But on the extremist side I didn't get any rejections at all. Everyone agreed to talk to me.

Well, I had nightmares when I was doing the Klan story all the time. I had a recurring nightmare of basically being exposed as a Jew inside the Klan compound.

Of course there are people who would like to eat breakfast without the screams of toddlers all around them, but those people should get over themselves and stop being stuck up and idiotic.

Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.

Twitter wanted to become a more egalitarian justice system, but instead it became a draconian one.

Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?

Feeling no remorse must be a blessing when all you have are your memories

My ideal world was the early days of Twitter, where everyone was curious about each other and everyone saw it as kind of a window into people's lives where we could be compassionate and curious and empathetic and we could tell each other secrets.

The laughing way we make damaged people our playthings, it's so dehumanizing.

Most goat-related military activity is still highly classified.