If you don't have a conscience, what is your behavior like? Apparently, if you don't have a conscience, if you don't really . . . love, then the only thing that's left for you is the game - it's about controlling things.

People ask me many times, "Aren't you afraid you're going to scare people? Aren't you afraid you're going to make people feel bad about the human race?" I look at it as entirely the opposite. Something you can understand and identify should be less frightening than something you can't. And to understand that there are people who are capable of acting without conscience, without considering other people at all, explains a lot of things.

Sociopaths are not inhibited by the notion that it's wrong to be addicted, or wrong to buy illegal drugs. Also, drinking or taking drugs can be a lot of fun, and even if it's not, it can dull that painful boredom for a while. So can certain other things, like taking risks, and particularly if you take a risk-averse person and you can manipulate him or her into taking risks, that's really fun.

Another thing that's fun for sociopath is speed, literal speed, going very fast in your car. Not that everybody who goes fast in their car is a sociopath, by any means, but anything that gives you a rush will lessen your sense of boredom.

To learn to be charming is fairly easy - you can teach somebody to be charming and to learn human emotions - or to learn the behaviors that go with human emotions. A sociopath, a smart one, will study the way we emote, and will learn how to do that quite effectively.

Most of us fill up our lives and end our boredom with our involvement with other people - people we love, people we hate, people we're afraid of, people we're interested in - and that's what keeps our minds going. So if you're sociopathic and you really have no caring for anybody, there's not much left, only boredom, and the way to relieve that, apparently, is to play a game and make sure that you win.

We are all a little crazy.