1
There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.Jon Ronson
2
The days that followed passed slowly. I lay in my hotel room and watched the kind of strange European TV that would probably make perfect sense if I understood the language, but because I didn’t, the programs just seemed dreamlike and baffling. In one studio show a group of Scandinavian academics watched as one of them poured liquid plastic into a bucket of cold water. It solidified, they pulled it out, handed it around the circle, and, as far as I could tell, intellectualized on its random misshapenness. I phoned home but my wife didn’t answer. It crossed my mind that she might be dead. I panicked. Then it turned out that she wasn’t dead. She had just been at the shops.Jon Ronson
3
Psychopaths [make] the world go around...society [is] an expression of that particular sort of madness... I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?Jon Ronson
4
The DSM-IV-TR is a 943-page textbook published by the American Psychiatric Association that sells for $99...There are currently 374 mental disorders. I bought the book...and leafed through it... I closed the manual. "I wonder if I've got any of the 374 mental disorders, " I thought. I opened the manual again. And instantly diagnosed myself with twelve different ones.Jon Ronson
5
Oh, you know what bloggers are like, they write and write and write. I don't know why, because they're not being paid.Jon Ronson
6
At the end of our conversation she (Martha Stout) turned to address you, the reader. She said if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one.Jon Ronson
7
Shall we go?' he murmured, perhaps regretting his decision to show me his army of plastic cartoon figurines.Jon Ronson
8
Even sleep offered no respite from my mental disorders. There was Nightmare Disorder, which is diagnosed when the sufferer dreams of being "pursued or declared a failure." All my nightmares involve someone chasing me down the street while yelling, "You're a failure!Jon Ronson
9
‎I have panicked unnecessarily in all four corners of the globe.Jon Ronson
10
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?Jon Ronson
11
I wondered what sort of woman loved a man like that.Jon Ronson
12
Bedlam: an institution with a history so fearsome it gave its name to a synonym for chaos and pandemonium.Jon Ronson
13
I was much crazier than I had imagined. Or maybe it was a bad idea to read DSM-IV when you're not a trained professional. Or maybe the American Psychiatric Association had a crazy desire to label all life a mental disorder.Jon Ronson
14
There's a societal push for conformity in all ways. There's less tolerance of difference. And so maybe for some people having a label is better. It can confer a sense of hope and direction. (interview with Allen Frances)Jon Ronson
15
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.Jon Ronson
16
A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone thought the yellow might calm them. But I couldn’t see how. Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald. .Jon Ronson