Psychopath Quotes & Sayings

You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid. — Bill Watterson

The Magnificent Seven consisted of one swimmer of color, a representative from each extreme of the educational spectrum, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a one-legged psychopath. When I envision us walking seven abreast through the halls of Cutter High, decked out in the sacred blue and gold, my heart swells. — Chris Crutcher

Language and words for psychopaths are only word deep; there is no emotional colouring behind it. A psychopath can use a word like, 'I love you' but it means nothing more to him than if he said, 'I'll have a cup of coffee.' — Robert D. Hare

While I don't think sociopaths have any sort of moral urge to do good things, I think they can and do act morally in the context of pursuing their own advantage. A good analogy would be a corporation. There are a lot of corporations that do things that you like, maybe even good things, like produce vaccines or electric cars, although the primary motivation is to make a profit. But just because you are trying to make a profit doesn't mean you can't do it by doing things you like, or that you are good at, or that comport with the way you see the world, or want the world to see you. — M.E. Thomas

Do you want to know how to write a song? Songwriting is about counterpoint. Counterpoint is the key. Putting two disparate images beside each other and seeing which way the sparks fly. Like letting a small child in the same room as, I don't know, a Mongolian psychopath or something, and just sitting back and seeing what happens. Then you send in a clown, say, on a tricycle and again you wait and you watch. And if that doesn't do it, you shoot the clown. — Nick Cave

For Feric Jaggar is essentially a monster: a narcissistic psychopath with paranoid obsessions. His total self-assurance and certainty is based on a total lack of introspective self-knowledge. In a sense, such a human being would be all surface and no interior. He would be able to manipulate the surface of social reality by projecting his own pathologies upon it, but he would never be able to share in the inner communion of interpersonal relationships. Such a creature could give a nation the iron leadership and sense of certainty to face a mortal crisis, but at what cost? Led by the likes of a Feric Jaggar, we might gain the world at the cost of our souls. No, — Norman Spinrad

Calvin had been frozen for almost 300 years. After that, he had been quarantined to a laboratory for several days, fed kitten, insulted by a clone, befriended by a mass murderer, operated on by a psychopath, bounced around by a moon rover, and forced into his own feet by an airplane. He felt that it was all worth it just to experience this one moment. — Brian Cramer

I'm an 'intelligent' sociopath. I don't have problems with drugs, I don't commit crimes, I don't take pleasure in hurting people, and I don't typically have relationship problems. I do have a complete lack of empathy. But I consider that an advantage, most of the time. Do I know the difference between right and wrong, and do I want to be good? Sure ... A peaceful and orderly world is a more comfortable world for me to live in. So do I avoid breaking the law because it's 'right'? No, I avoid breaking the law because it makes sense. — M.E. Thomas

I'm not a psychopath, I'm a fully functioning sociopath. Do your research. — Arthur Conan Doyle

When you're delivering information that you don't believe in or are lying about, you manifest the same behaviors as suspects in criminal or espionage cases who are lying to officers or agents." Wright's advice: believe in what you're saying (chapter 1). "If you don't believe what you're saying, your movements will be awkward and not natural. No amount of training - unless you're a trained espionage agent or psychopath - will allow you to break that incongruence between your words and actions. If you don't believe in the message, you cannot force your body to act as though you believe in the message. — Carmine Gallo

He has all the uncanny intuitions of a psychopath. Have you ever dealt with one? It's almost like a form of mind-reading ... — Sue Grafton

Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced - in a word, insane. — Frank Herbert

There are some people who always feel happy. They're called psychopaths — Tal Ben-Shahar

When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that? God is mysterious. — Sam Harris

Others took exception to being forced to wear little-girl-type dresses (a psychopath-devised punishment for noncooperation in the program). — Jon Ronson

Perfect. I would have an unbalanced psychopath on my hands armed with immortal supernatural power. This night kept getting better and better. — Courtney Cole

He acted like a libertine of Europe with a genteel Southern propriety - and had all the morals of an emotionless psychopath. The two former masked the latter, like leaves covering a snare. You didn't notice the steel jaws until they were impaled in your flesh, and by then it was already far too late to run. — Nenia Campbell

This was truly to be a radical milestone: the world's first-ever marathon nude psychotherapy session for criminal psychopaths. Elliott's raw, naked, LSD-fueled sessions lasted for epic eleven day stretches. The psychopaths spent every waking moment journeying to their darkest corners in an attempt to get better. There were no distractions - no television, no clothes, no clocks, no calendars, only a perpetual discussion (at least one hundred hours every week) of their feelings. When they got hungry, they sucked food through straws that protruded through the walls. As during Paul Bindrim's own nude psychotherapy sessions, the patients were encouraged to go to their rawest emotional places by screaming and clawing at the walls and confessing fantasies of forbidden sexual longing for one another ... — Jon Ronson

When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood. — M.E. Thomas

the psychopath will speak of himself in grandiose terms while blaming others and taking absolutely no responsibility for his actions. — Lillian Glass

If a woman is super-successful, she is called a psychopath. — Kangana Ranaut

I'm not a dogmatic, purist psychopath. There's an unfair image of me - mean, crazy, hostile. I'm really a very gentle person. — Michael Heizer

Most modern men want sex and can't have it. They want success and never get it.
They want money and never earn enough. Everybody has desires and nobody
Except the psychopathic few - Has the guts to go out and just take what they want.
- Professor Michael Friday — Barbie Wilde

If you enjoyed high school, you were probably a psychopath or a cheerleader. Or possibly both. — Jenny Lawson

If I think she' hot and it turns out she's a psychopath, then what does that say about me? I'm totally not ready for that kind of therapy. — Barry Lyga

The imaginary child implied by the toys on exhibit in Hong Kong was impossible to reconcile with my actual child. I didn't think I'd like to meet the imaginary child they implied. That child was mad with contradictions. He was a machine-gun-toting, Chopin-playing psychopath with a sugar high and a short attention span. — Donovan Hohn

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

In short, ISIS is composed of religiously motivated psychopaths, — Jay Sekulow

Every fighter that ever lived had fear. A boy comes to me and tells me that he's not afraid, if I believed him I'd say he's a liar or there's something wrong with him. I'd send him to a doctor to find out what the hell's the matter with him, because this is not a normal reaction. The fighter that's gone into the ring and hasn't experienced fear is either a liar or a psychopath ... — Cus D'Amato

I'm not a psychopath-I'm wearing a tie! — Seth Godin

It takes many sheep to satisfy one wolf. — Nenia Campbell

So what - there's plenty of time: for the two weeks of Christmastime there's no marrying - you find me a match during that time, and on Epiphany, in the evening, we'll get married and leave." "My dear man," I say, "you must have gone a bit out of your mind from boredom." (The word "psychopath" was not yet in use among us.) — Nikolai Leskov

I am the neurological opposite of a psychopath, in that I feel anxious almost all the time. It must be great to not constantly feel like you've got someone living inside your face, shooting you with a mini Taser. — Jon Ronson

Pretty much everyone hates high school. It's a measure of your humanity, I suspect. If you enjoyed high school, you were probably a psychopath or a cheerleader. Or possibly both. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, you know. I've tried to block out the memory of my high school years, but no matter how hard you try, it's always with you, like an unwanted hitchhiker. Or herpes. I assume ... — Jenny Lawson

If you do not have a close friendship with your children, I will.--Child Molester warning all parents from the book Type 1 Sociopath — P.A. Speers

That's the psychopath: somebody who doesn't understand what's going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened." But — Jon Ronson

He was was especially excited about Aguirre, the Wrath of God. 'Look at this crazy dude,' he yelled, pointing at Klaus Kinski, who on the cover is wearing a Viking helmet and looks like a psychopath. — Jesse Andrews

Faking mental illness to get out of a prison sentence, he explained, is exactly the kind of deceitful and manipulative act you'd expect of a psychopath. — Jon Ronson

A psychopath can tell what you're thinking but what they don't do is feel what you feel. These are people without a conscience. — Robert D. Hare

sutures, bandages, antibiotics Mop Sucking chest wound Anesthesia, surgery Cork Cancer Chemotherapy, radiation, surgery Casket wreath* 13 Diabetes Insulin Leeches* 14 Hatchet embedded in skull Removal of hatchet, treatment of wound Larger hat Eyes gouged out in hospital by psychopath posing as nurse Prosthetic eyeballs, therapy Six-pack Source: — Dave Barry

The story about Bessie Goldberg that I heard from my parents was that a nice old lady had been killed down the street and an innocent black man went to prison for the crime. Meanwhile
unknown to anyone
a violent psychopath named Al was working alone at our house all day and probably committed the murder. In our family this story eventually acquired the tidy symbolism of a folk tale. Roy Smith was a stand-in for everything that was decent but utterly defenseless. Albert DeSalvo, of course, was a stand-in for pure random evil. — Sebastian Junger

If I have a mission in life, it is to convince people that everyone is morally motivated - everyone except for psychopaths. — Jonathan Haidt

All stories are love stories, and there are numerous kinds of love, from the love of a mother holding her child for the first time to the love of blood that drives a psychopath, so I will always write about love, but not necessarily romance. Let the saner people do that. — Alcatraz Dey

No I'm not," I whisper to myself. "I'm a fucking evil psychopath. — Bret Easton Ellis

I don't suppose I could have a whiskey instead of the wine, could I?"
"Whiskey?"
"Yes"
"I didn't know you drank whiskey."
"And I didn't know you were a psychopath. Just bring me a whiskey — B.A. Paris

It's ironic, isn't it? A hundred psychology students, and not one of us recognized a classic psychopath. You know the strange thing? I wished I had done everything he claimed I had. If I had, then it would all have made sense: I would have been getting what I deserved. But I hadn't done any of it, and yet that made absolutely no difference to what happened. There was no such thing as cause and — Tana French

Self-Professed Black Magicians seem universally unable to fight, fuck, or even buy their way out of wet paper bags, despite phantasizing constantly about becoming powerful psychopaths. — Peter J. Carroll

Is he a psychopath? I don't know. I don't know what the definition is. Don't know how far down the path of eating people you have to go before you officially become a psycho. — Sally Green

You can't be serious!" "I'm so serious." "He's a psychopath." "He's my psychopath. — Amy A. Bartol

Fact: A psychopath is born every 47 seconds. — Kent A. Kiehl

So you want we to play a game?
...

Aha, I like that...!

I FUCKING LOVE IT! — Deyth Banger

Nick, fetch my car, fetch my clothes, sweep the chimney, make my bed, watch my psychopath, fetch my slippers. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Rose only hangs out with guys and psychopaths," said Mia.
"Well," he said cheerfully, "since I'm both a psychopath and a guy, that would explain why we're such good friends. — Richelle Mead

Well, I can answer that," Jackal said breezily, and bared his fangs in a lethal grin. "He can die. Painfully. After I rip his other arm from the socket and shove it so far down his poetry-spouting piehole that he chokes on it. What I don't understand is why we're standing up here yapping away when we should be down there kicking in his door. So, come on, team." Jackal's gaze was mocking but dangerous. "Let's go kill ourselves a psychopath. — Julie Kagawa

I think we are entitled to at least three provisional conclusions. The first is that religion and the churches are manufactured, and that this salient fact is too obvious to ignore. The second is that ethics and morality are quite independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it. The third is that religion is - because it claims a special divine exemption for its practices and beliefs - not just amoral but immoral. The ignorant psychopath and or brute who mistreats his children must be punished but can be understood. Those who claim a heavenly warrant for the cruelty have been tainted by evil, and also constitute far more danger. — Christopher Hitchens

He wasn't just a psychopath, he was an asshole. Who cares why anyone wanted to listen to him? — Alison Umminger

I think the mistake lots of people make when it comes to a psychopath is that they completely write off their actions as cruel, callous and completely calculated, but actually, the truth is that they have interests and reasons behind their actions. — James Norton

The killer's name was Michael Stone and he was a known psychopath. He had previous convictions. But the law stated that only patients whose mental disorders were considered treatable could be detained beyond their prison sentences. Psychopaths were considered untreatable and so Michael Stone had to be free. — Jon Ronson

Our cause is much greater. And now,with you on board, it won't be long before we rule the Middleworld, the Lowerworld, and ultimately the Upperworld too. My dad's really gonna be proud of me then. His eyes blaze at the idea,proving once again,he's a psychopath. — Alyson Noel

If you play a gay role, it sticks more than it does if an actor were to play a murderer or a psychopath. — Harry Hamlin

Well, first I tried just telling her the truth. That if you kiss her, you'll die. She started crying hysterically."
"Oh, good thinking," I say, lifting the cup of hot chocolate to my mouth. Why hadn't I thought of that right off?
"Yeeeah, turns out not so much. I thought that might have worked since, you know, she's supposedly in love with you, but then being a total psychopath and all, she started blubbering, 'I'd rather have one perfect passionate kiss with Haden and lose him forever, than to have never kissed him at all.'"
I almost choke on a sip of hot chocolate. It burns my throat. — Bree Despain

Every town has a psychopath or two. Not just the everyday crazy person, either. Not like Crazy Larry, the paint huffing weirdo peddling around town on a child-sized Huffy ranting about the end of the world, or the old lady dressed in rags who hands out filthy doll clothes to the kiddies. I'm talking about the cold, never remorseful lunatic, who may never have seemed insane up until the day he hacked apart his mother and shoved her stinking corpse into the attic. This town is overflowing with them; bloodcurdling murderers like Kenny Wayne Hilbert, Charlie Fender ... Orland Winthro. And Al, the crazy had to come from somewhere. — Nikki Ferguson

He will choose you, disarm you with his words, and control you with his presence. He will delight you with his wit and his plans. He will show you a good time but you will always get the bill. He will smile and deceive you, and he will scare you with his eyes. And when he is through with you, and he will be through with you, he will desert you and take with him your innocence and your pride. You will be left much sadder but not a lot wiser, and for a long time you will wonder what happened and what you did wrong. And if another of his kind comes knocking on your door, will you open it?

-From an essay signed "A psychopath in prison — Robert D. Hare

There's always something in it for the person who is allowing to be taken advantage of. - Psychotherapist David in Type 1 Sociopath — P.A. Speers

You have really nice teeth, Terry said and thought they could be excellent for his collection of human body parts. — Jonas Eriksson

If everyone could understand the working of a psychopath's mind, we undoubtedly would be closer to insanity ourselves. — Dan Simmons

Ivanov: You only qualified last year, my dear friend, you're still young and confident, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice. Don't marry a Jew or a psychopath or a bluestocking but choose yourself someone ordinary, someone a shade of grey, with no bright colour and no superfluous noises. In general, construct your whole life on a conventional pattern. The greyer, the more monotonous the background, the better. My dear fellow, don't do
battle against thousands all on your own, don't tilt against windmills, don't beat your head against walls ... And may
God preserve you from all kinds of rational farming, newfangled schools, fiery speeches ... Shut yourself in your shell and do your little God-given business ... It's snugger, healthier and more honest. — Anton Chekhov

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing, cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions of men. Moreover it must be fed, not only with flesh but with oil. — Winston S. Churchill

People often express surprise that I'm not a psychopath. But it's not about what I want to do to other people, it's that I'm scared of what other people might do to me. — Neil Cross

Sociopath is a word that has sort of become shorthand for psychopath and there's a distinct difference, it's interesting if you look it up. Sociopath if you look at the medical definition, the profile of a sociopath is that they are supremely intelligent people that are also pathological liars, they have no moral structure and there is one more, they have no compassion or empathy for other people. — Cillian Murphy

Norman Mailer described the desire to be cool as a decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention. — Anthony Bourdain

She was a single mother of four kids, with little help from Twon, who turned into a complete psychopath once they divorced. — Jessica N. Watkins

Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something. — John Hannah

And Jazz snapped.
He didn't snap the way a normal person might snap. A normal person would fling his arms around and stomp his feet and rant at the top of his lungs, bellowing to the sky. There might be tears, from a normal person.
Jazz went quiet. He darted out one hand and grabbed the wrist of the paramedic who had been trying to cuff him and pulled the man close, holding his gaze.
In a moment, he channeled every last drop of (his father).
Who am I? I'll tell you. I'm the local psychopath, and if you don't save my best friend's life, I will hunt down everyone you've ever cared about in your life and make you watch while I do things to them that will have you begging me to kill them. That's who I am. — Barry Lyga

I started writing a novel from the monster's point of view. It has its own difficulties but, I'm ashamed to say, it's much easier writing from a psychopath's point of view than from that of their empathetic opposite. — Justine Larbalestier

Another difference between psychopaths and other inmates is that psychopaths don't get distressed by being in prison. Most inmates get depressed when they get inside, and they find prison to be a stressful experience. A hallmark feature of psychopaths' disorder is that they don't get bothered by much of anything. They don't ruminate and they don't get depressed. — Kent A. Kiehl

Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath. — Erik Larson

I'd probably put those salt and pepper shakers away now, David, because we're about to be visited by dribbling cannibal psychopath and we wouldn't want to tease these fellows. Of course, if they're very hungry, I do have this left arm that I don't use all that much. — Garret Keizer

Psychopaths play on the fact that most of us are trusting and forgiving people. The warning signs are always there; it's just difficult to see them because once we trust someone, the friendship becomes a blinder. - The Psychopath Next Door. — Mercy Cortez

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. --John Woods comp.lang.c++ — Jeff Knupp

Even if you believe that every human being harbors an immortal soul, the problem of responsibility remains: I cannot take credit for the fact that I do not have the soul of a psychopath. — Sam Harris

A psychopath's diet consisted of domination, power, and control. — Keri Lake

It's not just that," Chief Porter said. "A guy who once would have raped and killed a woman, now a lot of times he also has to cut off her lips and mail them to us or take her eyes for a souvenir and keep them in his freezer at home. There's more flamboyant craziness these days." Giving the buttered cinnamon roll a reprieve, Ozzie said, "Maybe it's all these superhero movies with all their supervillains. Some psychopath who used to be satisfied raping and murdering, these days he thinks that he should be in a Batman movie, he wants to be the Joker or the Penguin." "No real-life bad guy wants to be the Penguin," I assured him. "Norman Bates was happy just dressing up like his mother and stabbing people," Chief Porter said, "but Hannibal Lecter has to cut off their faces and eat their livers with fava beans. The role models have become more intense. — Dean Koontz

What happened, Bob explained to us now, although we didn't need telling, was that Jack Abbott was a psychopath. He couldn't bear being disrespected. His self-worth was too grandiose for that. He couldn't control his impulses. "When — Jon Ronson

Never angrily rant into your web cam. While smashing a keyboard in half over a game of 'World of Warcraft' may seem totally justified in your head, to the rest of the known universe you look like a raging psychopath. — Ray William Johnson

Gaia wasn't ruthless and self-serving like Caine; she was evil, like Drake. A psychopath. A mad and terrible beast. — Michael Grant

Why did you push her ?' Rosa screams again. I realise she's pointing at me. — Justine Larbalestier

What my research told me is that a psychopath cannot change. You're born like that. — Jeff Lindsay

In a place filled with fears, they were looking for the man who had none. — John Katzenbach

I consider it somewhat psychopathic to label someone from afar as a psychopath. We love nothing more than to declare other people insane, especially people we don't like. — Jon Ronson

She promised to be good. She wasn't. — Justine Larbalestier

Jeese, I thought, fear choking me. I was being targeted by a 'tangoed' psychopath! — Adele Rose

I feel like you are this or that because other people say so. I wouldn't know how to play a psychopath. I don't think about it that way. You think about playing the scene but if the other people say that guy is crazy, then you are. — Christopher Walken

When stepping into the mind of a psychopath, you realize that there is something missing in their brain that they do not understand the consequences of their actions- in a sense. — Lorraine Toussaint

Didn't anyone ask you where your parents are?"
"They asked. Especially about my parents."
"What did you tell them?"
"I said I ate them."
"Jesus, Rosa. — Justine Larbalestier

If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row. — Damian Lewis

Either the gates of hell had opened, or Tom had lost his mind; for there could be nothing like this entity outside the precincts of the damned, except in the fevered fantasies of a raving paranoid psychopath — Dean Koontz

I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices - it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath - someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts — Heath Ledger

You -have- to love your monster. — Philippa Dowding

His confession felt like finding out my cat - Sir Edmund Hillary, named after the first man to climb Mt Everest - could talk and wanted to give me a tongue bath. At best, Sir Hillary was indifferent to my existence. At worst, he may have been plotting my demise. He was an audacious Calico psychopath, always pushing his litterbox from its place beside the toilet in the bathroom directly in front of the shower, but only when I was in the shower ... — Penny Reid