The sociopath wants the person to be easily enough fooled to stick with him. This can be accomplished by looking for someone who is very, very loyal. Most of us consider loyalty to be a very positive trait - and it is a positive trait. But it also blinds people to some of the traits of the person they're loyal to.

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.

The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.

Most of who we are is our deepest emotions, and someone who cannot feel those emotions in a positive way is never going to understand much about his fellow human beings.

The ultimate manipulation is to kill someone, and sociopathy is murderous in a psychological sense - there's a kind of soul-murder going on.

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.

Sociopaths are not usually physically violent. 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. 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.