I heard a story about her once,' said James. 'She was interviewing a psychopath. She showed him a picture of a frightened face and asked him to identify the emotion. He said he didn't know what the emotion was but it was the face people pulled just before he killed them.

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.

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.

Somebody told me, “Twitter hates tabloids, but Twitter is constantly acting like a tabloid, repeating the mistakes of the things we’re hoping to better.” Twitter wanted to become a more egalitarian justice system, but instead it became a draconian one.

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.

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.

I have thought sometimes that the sanest people, the people who are just very balanced, very happy, are probably lower achieving than other people. My kind of irrationality happens to be fear or anxiety.