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.

Most goat-related military activity is still highly classified.

It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy.

Oh, you know what bloggers are like, they write and write and write. I don't know why, because they're not being paid.

Bedlam: an institution with a history so fearsome it gave its name to a synonym for chaos and pandemonium.

Sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

It is slightly chilling to realize there are rational, functional people up there employed to spot, nurture, and exploit those down here among us who are irrational and can barely cope. If you want to know how stupid you’re perceived to be by the people up there, count the unsolicited junk mail you receive. If you get a lot, you’re perceived to be alluringly stupid.