...We're all mad here

" You maggots made me sick, hypocrites one and all. We are all expendable for a cause, and no one knows that better than those who kill for policy, clandestinely or openly, as do the governments of the world which kill in the name of God and country and for whatever else they deem appropriate,

December 8, 1998

"Take the nicest ten-year-old from the best home and put him on the streets, and he’s going to learn to steal to survive. Take the best little girl from Sunday school, tell her that her parents left and don’t care, and dump her on the corner, and she will be turning tricks by the end of the week just to eat.

Well, I was that boy. I was that girl. I didn’t want to be this way, no kid does. I wasn’t some demon that sprang from my mother’s womb. Everybody talks role models. What role models did I have? Perverted reform school guards? Great parents? Jesus and the Bible?  It was the Bible that drove my mother out of her home and put her on the streets.

The ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers’ society provided to raise me in the system beat me bloody with whips and straps, fucked me in the ass until I shit blood and couldn’t walk, and taught me to hate.

And everybody’s shocked how I turned out. Wake up! You did this to me and you’re doing it to thousands like me every day.”

— Charles Manson, 1976

Q. Was the cannibalism a sexual gratification too?

A. It was. It started out as an experimentation. Made me feel like they were more a part of me.

Q. (That’s interesting.)

A. So it did give me some satisfaction and there was some gratification.

Q. (How would you prepare it?)

A. Uh…on the stove, on the skillet, uh, just like you prepare a regular piece of meat, they’d be, uh, cut into, you know, sizes that were small enough to eat.

Q. (Any other organs?)

A. Hearts, liver, thigh meat, biceps, biceps…

Q. (How did it taste?)

A. Uh…there’s no way of saying it without sounding, uh…gruesome…

Q. (I don’t find it offensive.)

A. Well, it…I, I don’t know how to describe it. You’ve had filet mignon, haven’t you?

Q. Uh huh, that’s one of my favorites.

A. Yeah. Very tender…

"Do you feel guilty? Do you feel guilty for the thousands of millions of Indians you destroyed? Do you feel guilty for the gas chambers where you killed the Jews? Do you feel guilty for the timeless, endless how far can you go back? And say you feel guilty? Of what? And then you will make me suffer until I say "okay now I feel guilty." Do you feel secure now that I feel guilty? Is that going to make you feel better if I feel guilty?"