Mitchell Zuckoff

“More people will watch 'Spotlight' than will ever read the 'Globe' series that inspired it.”

“I wanted to talk face-to-face with as many people as would see me. Some actors were so busy they could only give me an hour on the phone. But my feeling is that if you're actually in the room with them, they get comfortable and you get more.”

“It's not that you make a psychopath. They are - more likely, they come out that way, and they show their stripes over time.”

“There's a certain type of sociopathy to many schemers.”

“fear is something i don't you experience unless you have a choice. If you have a choice, you're liable to be afraid. But without a choice, what is there to be afraid of? You just go along and do what has to be done.".,”

“I need to know everything inside quote marks is true.”

“I've remained in touch with more than a dozen descendants of Gremlin Special survivors, victims, and rescuers. I treasured my friendship with Earl Walter Jr., the lead paratrooper who jumped into the valley to protect the survivors.”

“Most travel disasters turn into something else: a story of survival, a story of bravery, of heroism, sometimes villainy. You just don't know when it starts where it's going to go because they are unexpected events.”

“The combination of Ponzi's huge personality and the enormous if brief success of his scheme, combined with the tremendous publicity which surrounded it, is ultimately what attached his name to it.”

“While researching the book, I used the Freedom of Information Act to request what the military calls Individual Deceased Personnel Files for all the Gremlin Special's passengers and crew.”

“When running a Ponzi scheme, how does one avoid enormous, unexpected withdrawals - runs on the bank, so to speak - that would pull back the curtain and reveal a little man blowing smoke? One way would be to attract a core of investors who could be counted on to never withdraw more than a small percentage of principal each year.”

“My favorite pre-Ponzi schemer was known as '520 Percent Miller' because he promised 10 percent returns a week, or 520 percent a year. Of course he was just using new investors' money to pay old investors, and soon he was on the lam.”

“There is an interesting parallel between the 'Argo' story and '13 Hours' in that, around the world, we have 285 or so diplomatic outposts and the expectation that the local government will come to our aid if we ever come under attack on the sovereign property of the United States in an embassy.”