Jon Ronson Quotes

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Jon Ronson

Profession : Journalist

Birth : May 10, 1967

Trying to solve the mystery is what I enjoy most about writing.

Jon Ronson

Sometimes labeling is only useful, like with OCD. Once you're labeled you can be treated. On other occasions labeling leads to tyranny, like with childhood bipolar disorder in the U.S.

Jon Ronson

Of course there are people who would like to eat breakfast without the screams of toddlers all around them, but those people should get over themselves and stop being stuck up and idiotic.

Jon Ronson

I have thought sometimes that the sanest people, the people who are just very balanced, very happy, are probably lower achieving than other people. My kind of irrationality happens to be fear or anxiety.

Jon Ronson

I think if somebody is so set in their ways about what they feel about something - and you get this a lot in academia, of course, and also different sorts of journalism too - you're going to sweep under the carpet the facts that don't suit your thesis. And I think that happens quite a lot in the courtroom, for instance.

Jon Ronson

Obviously, I like to write stories that are page-turners. But I always try my very, very hardest to be as factually true as possible.

Jon Ronson

My entry into screenwriting was not smooth.

Jon Ronson

When I was 20, I wrote a film on spec and sent it to the BBC. They wrote back, 'Usually, when we reject submissions, we like to offer some encouragement, but in your case, we don't see any point in you continuing.' I took it as encouragement anyway, thinking that only people who write terrible things are capable of writing great things.

Jon Ronson

Film people can be quite ruthless and tough. I think it's because the industry is filled with talented, driven people chasing nowhere near enough work.

Jon Ronson

Film isn't a meritocracy; there's no system ensuring the best screenplays get produced. It's a hustle.

Jon Ronson

Film is like a casserole. Everybody is thrown into a pot, and we're all in it together.

Jon Ronson

What I think was a really lucky coincidence was that a lot of the themes of 'Okja' are things I write about a lot: cognitive dissonance and corporate greed and also the internal politics of fringe groups.

Jon Ronson

If I interview somebody for an hour, I'm looking for four amazing minutes.

Jon Ronson

In the early days of Twitter, it was like a place of radical de-shaming. People would admit shameful secrets about themselves, and other people would say, 'Oh my God, I'm exactly the same.' Voiceless people realized that they had a voice, and it was powerful and eloquent.

Jon Ronson

The phrase 'misuse of privilege' is becoming a free pass to tear apart pretty much anybody we choose to. It's becoming a devalued term, and it's making us lose our capacity for empathy and for distinguishing between serious and unserious transgressions.

Jon Ronson

Maybe there's two types of people in the world: those people who favor humans over ideology, and those people who favor ideology over humans.

Jon Ronson

I just don't think I'm very good at fiction.

Jon Ronson

There was a kind of infiniteness to fiction that I found sort of... disconcerting. I remember having these really panicky thoughts, like, 'I can make this person say anything. I could make him do anything! I could put a jetpack onto his back and shoot him into space!' I don't like this feeling of having no rules.

Jon Ronson

I really admire Nick Hornby - for example, the way that he can make ordinary stuff so beautiful!

Jon Ronson

I'm much more interested in looking at our own failings than going to some faraway place and looking at their failings, thus making us feel good about ourselves.

Jon Ronson