Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

by Malcolm Gladwell

The people who were right about Hitler were those who knew the least about him personally. The people who were wrong about Hitler were the ones who had talked with him for hours.

The issue with spies is not that there is something brilliant about them. It is that there is something wrong with us.

You should know that you’re impacting a person. It shouldn’t be taken lightly.

spending four years in an Italian prison for the crime of not behaving the way we think people are supposed to behave after their roommate is murdered.

Yet what does Diane Sawyer say to her? She scolds her for not behaving the way we think people are supposed to behave after their roommate is murdered.

we need to accept that the search to understand a stranger has real limits. We will never know the whole truth. We have to be satisfied with something short of that.