Bill Tench quotes from Mindhunter

Bill Tench

The question is not only why did the killer do it, but why did the killer do it this way?

Bill Tench

If what we're doing doesn't get under your skin, you're more screwed up than I thought, or kidding yourself.

Bill Tench

I've been around crazy. I was in the army.

Bill Tench

Guys communicate in a certain way. It can be rough, but it's like a code. It gets out the conflict.

Bill Tench

I can choke down the bile, manufacture empathy - when our subjects are at least informative.

Bill Tench

Little tip, if you start to see guys loosening their ties, get out while you can.

Bill Tench

The guru of Munchkinland can fuck off straight to hell as far as I'm concerned.

Holden Ford

You get onto a crowded elevator, and you face the opposite direction, the back of the elevator, and everybody freaks out. They're uncomfortable for reasons they can't even articulate. But if you turn around and face the front, everybody relaxes.

Bill Tench

Okay. Well, how do we do that?

Holden Ford

What do we have in common? What unites us? What keeps us all awake at night?

Bill Tench

[squabbling about their differing methods] Let me ask you something else. Do you have a girlfriend?

Holden Ford

I do now, Bill, as it happens.

Bill Tench

Okay. So next time you're a long way from home and you flip your shit, you find a pay phone and you tell it to your girlfriend. Okay?

Holden Ford

Okay.

Bill Tench

How's that sound?

Holden Ford

It sounds okay, Bill.

Bill Tench

Holden, they're not gonna let you in with a sidearm.

Holden Ford

The guy is six foot nine, weighs 300 pounds.

Bill Tench

That's right.

Holden Ford

So what's he gonna do?

Bill Tench

He's gonna take the fuckin' thing away, kill you with it, and then have sex with your face.

Can you make him shut up?

Bill Tench

I have not been able to, sir.

Holden Ford

How do we get ahead of crazy if we don't know how crazy thinks?

I like you, Bill. I don't particularly like him, but I like you... Okay, you may continue with your little sideshow. However, no one can know about it. Clear? You will relocate yourselves to the basement beneath Behavioral Sciences, reporting directly and exclusively to me.

Bill Tench

The basement? I'm 44 years old.

Holden Ford

So you're saying you don't think this, us interviewing these killers, is crazy?

Wendy Carr

Just the opposite. I mean, crazy in the way that anyone with a truly new idea is crazy. But no.

Holden Ford

Wow, okay. That's a relief. That hasn't really been the feedback we've gotten so far.

Bill Tench

Actually, this is the only feedback we've gotten so far.

Bill Tench

I'm sorry, Ed, do you mean that violence in the movies drove you to kill those women?

Edmund Kemper

No. My point is, in reality it doesn't work the way you expect. When you stab somebody they're supposed to fall dead. They go, "Oh," and they fall dead, right?

Bill Tench

Right.

Edmund Kemper

In reality, when you stab somebody, they lose blood pressure and they leak to death, very slowly.

Bill Tench

There's nothing behind Kemper's eyes. It's like standing near a black hole.

Holden Ford

Right.

Bill Tench

And he thinks we're his friends. Well, he thinks you're his friend. Which makes you a pretty great FBI agent.

Holden Ford

So what are you teaching?

Wendy Carr

Um, I'm teaching a class on the intersection of sociopathy and fame. People like, um, Andy Warhol, Jim Morrison. Their celebrity becomes the only thing they need to sustain their ego.

Bill Tench

Nixon was a sociopath.

Wendy Carr

Very similar.

Holden Ford

How do you get to be president of the United States if you're a sociopath?

Wendy Carr

The question is, how do you get to be president of the United States if you're not? That's why this work is so vital. It goes so much further than the FBI.

Bill Tench

All the way to the White House.

Wendy Carr

Perhaps, yeah.