“The ultimate manipulation is to kill someone, and sociopathy is murderous in a psychological sense—there’s a kind of soul-murder going on.”— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com
“Most of us have some kind of positive goal in mind when we think of winning. A sociopath thinks in terms of successfully manipulating someone into doing something that he or she would not have done otherwise. That can be a small thing or a tremendous thing, but the point for the sociopath is to win,…”— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com
“Well, the perfect victim, from the sociopath’s point of view, is the person who is smart enough and capable enough to do him some good in the world and who is also fun to manipulate. How much fun is it to manipulate someone who is stupid and incompetent? Another good person to manipulate is someone…”— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com
“Another lynchpin is dishonesty. Lying for the sake of lying. Lying just to see whether you can trick people. And sometimes telling larger lies to get larger effects. The other thing that needs to be stressed is that sociopaths are often extremely charming. They are people who are better than you and…”— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com
“A typical sociopath never kills anybody and doesn’t look like Charles Manson—they look like you and me and everybody else. You’re not looking for someone who’s recognizably evil or scary-looking, but rather someone who looks normal.”— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com
“Sociopaths are just like everybody else in that some of them are really brilliant, some of them are really stupid, and most of them are somewhere in between.”— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com
“So if you don’t have a conscience, what is your behavior like? Apparently, if you don’t have a conscience, if you don’t really . . . love, then the only thing that’s left for you is the game—it’s about controlling things.”— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com