Louis Theroux Quotes

I'm not one of these guys who sits around saying, 'Gee, I mean, the person had a strange childhood and that's why he's doing this horrible thing. Poor Jeffrey Dahmer. He's just had a bad childhood and that's why he's eating people.' Wait a second! This person should be removed from the planet.

The crimes in my books are committed by people who can't keep it together any more. They do something to express their own pain, and that has a terrible effect on somebody else.

A working detective has no hope of understanding what even experts who devote their lives to the study of criminal psychology can't figure out.

I got to read some writings by serial killers, and they got inside my head. They were quite disturbing. I read disturbing stuff about that very detached way of manipulating people to do things.

I do believe that Jodi Arias shows a lot of signs of mental illness.

The book grew out of the introduction I did for Brady's Gates of Janus. I knew that the writing in that introduction had a better than average chance of being read by people involved in Brady's life - parents of victims, police, Brady himself.

I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do that.

Our show is different, because it's not about law and order, it's about psychology, the intent of somebody.

Any sympathy won for Aileen Wuornos based on a lie is not sympathy at all. The question is, can we have sympathy for the circumstances of someone's life? That's what I was interested in.

I'm almost positive I have some type of PTSD. Almost a decade of my life was consumed by the prison system.

I've never had any interest in reading the real-life stories of criminals. I don't want to get inside their heads.

Many times, I left the prison thinking, 'I'm smart. I can make it. I won't get caught up again.' But you get off downtown Skid Row, and you're a target for all of the environmental harms in that area. The pain and trauma in that area is so thick, you can almost reach your hand out and touch it.

Different victims, different survivors of different crimes will choose to pursue different paths. And hopefully, over time, we can collectively transform our culture into one that prioritizes healing and prevention instead of simply focusing on punishment.

I have more information than anybody's ever had about this case. I have 7,000 letters from Aileen Wuornos and all the letters between her and her girlfriend.

Many offenders have had immensely difficult upbringings and do not have the support of loving families and friends.

I've seen people get robbed, seen people get shot with my own eyes, for pointless petty crimes.

We think criminality is something that exists in somehow another world to us. But actually, there is an invisible criminal web in which we are all enveloped.

As a lawyer, I've dealt with really serious offences, and the public rarely hear what the true impact is on the victims' families. When you hear it from the mouths of victims, your entire approach changes, because it could happen to anybody, and they articulate that in such a powerful way.

Like so many other bored teens, I was a bored teen with a hobby. The only difference was mine was obsessing about crime.

The increasing crimes in Chennai have become a cause for concern. Chain snatching has become a routine affair.

I made my third parole and I believe if I had made it the first time, I wouldn't be here today. I still would've been out there doing stupid stuff.

It's not terrifying to watch 'Mindhunter,' necessarily, but it's just unsettling. You can find Aileen Wuornos just talking to a camera. It's hard to watch. Her eyeballs, they are just terrifying.

As a former federal prosecutor with experience prosecuting both violent and white-collar criminals, I've seen what it looks like when the powerful prey on the vulnerable.

Sadly, as a seasoned prosecutor, I know what dark acts people are capable of.

I personally hate psychiatrists. When I was a kid, I saw quite a few of them, and they ruin everything.