The Anatomy of Motive Quotes

“There are three youthful behaviors that together make up what has come to be known as the homicidal triad: enuresis (bed-wetting) beyond an appropriate age, fire starting, and cruelty to animals and/or smaller children.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“Inadequate people have to try to feel worthy, and one way to feel worthy is to find someone else unworthy or inferior. If you can’t find many people less worthy than yourself on individual merits, then you have to find them inferior by race or creed.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“the violent act is the result of a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy on the part of the assassin.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“The internalizer is the loner, the asocial who has to put emotional and physical distance between himself and everyone else.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“And while most abused or neglected children develop coping skills and strategies to overcome a difficult upbringing, the ones who don’t often grow into angry, hostile, frustrated adults and become violent offenders.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“Stated as simply as possible: Why? + How? = Who.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“After a child's worst day, he or she still looks completely beautiful and innocent in sleep”
― Mark Olshaker, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“He blamed the influence of alcohol and some of the owners of the torched properties for leaving combustible materials lying around. You can imagine what I thought of that one; it’s like a rapist excusing himself by saying his victim was asking for it.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“M.O. changes as the offender becomes more experienced and proficient. But signature is a critical clue in coming up with the UNSUB’s personality and motive.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“If you rob a bank at gunpoint, the gun is part of your M.O. True signature, on the other hand, is the aspect of the crime that emotionally fulfills the offender, and so it remains relatively the same.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“But women are not the predators and they are not the problem. Of course, while most of what we say about development and motive relates to men, the better women understand these processes and issues, the better they will be able to recognize these behaviors and combat them.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“You will undoubtedly notice that I am confining myself here to characterizations of men. By definition, this is sexist, but by definition, men are the problem. Both the FBI behavioral science divisions and (even more so) Ann Burgess and her associates have studied women who come from the same kinds of abusive and neglectful backgrounds as the men in our prison profiles. But for whatever complex reasons, women do not manifest their frustrations and emotional injuries in the same aggressive ways.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“assassin types tend to be paranoid and don’t like eye contact.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“Just as we tell parents that their greatest weapon against child molesters is being able to instill self-esteem in their kids, I could tell this radio audience that sexual predators home in on victims in whom they sense a lack of self-esteem and self-worth—the ones they feel they can entice, mold to their own purposes, and separate from family, friends, and values.”
― John E. Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“You will undoubtedly notice that I am confining myself here to characterizations of men. By definition, this is sexist, but by definition, men are the problem.”
― Mark Olshaker, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

“Etna filed an unsuccessful suit against McDonald’s, claiming that her husband’s rampage was caused by eating too many hamburgers and Chicken McNuggets—that the high levels of monosodium glutamate they contained interacted with the lead and cadmium he had built up in his system during his years as a welder.”
― John Edward Douglas, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals