“This was always the hard part. If you knew what was normal to the enemy, then everything became easy: you could lull them to sleep by feeding them normal, and you could scare the hell out of them by suddenly taking normal away. But normal to Afghans and Chechens was so different from normal to Russians that it took a bit of work for a man like Sokolov to establish what it was.”
Day 2
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Neal Stephenson 167
American science fiction writer 1959Related quotes
http://www.dba-oracle.com/oracle_tips_codd_obit.htm
Relational Database: A Practical Foundation for Productivity (1982)
“You have sexual tendencies that are not normal, and you should be ashamed of them.”
Source: You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day

“Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”
Source: The Testament of Jessie Lamb (2011), Chapter 1 (pp. 6-7)

Part VI: Welcome to the Dollhouse, page 239.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

“Normally, they want me to be rude to them.”
Quoted in interview, Playboy magazine (February 2007)
2000s
Context: Normally, they want me to be rude to them. People come up to me and sing, and I say "That was great. Thank you." And they're like "Well, aren't you going to be rude to me?" No! When I miss auditions, contestants get upset that I'm not there, because they expect me to be cruel to them — it's some sort of badge of honor. That's how crazy everything is.

As quoted in Gholam R. Afkhami (2009) The life and times of the Shah, page 591
Attributed