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

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

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.

We want to see ourselves as curious and open-minded and smart and understanding things in terms of context and nuance, but when someone tries to do that in the midst of a shaming they're turned on.

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.

Trying to prove you’re not a psychopath is even harder than trying to prove you’re not mentally ill,’ said Tony.

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.