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.

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.

You can say anything to David Icke and he will accept it and put it into his ideology.

As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

Well, I had nightmares when I was doing the Klan story all the time. I had a recurring nightmare of basically being exposed as a Jew inside the Klan compound.

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.

In the midst of a burning-hot shaming, calling for patience and context and understanding and empathy can really land you in trouble.