Lawrence Wright quotes - page 3

I was a very religious teenager, and I moved away from that. (Lawrence Wright)
Dallas was not a caring city, but it was efficient. View quote
Lawrence Wright
Craziness doesn't have anything to do with how successful a religion might be. View quote
Lawrence Wright
I spent two years in Cairo, and I felt a certain urgency about trying to understand the region and the conflict here, in the modest way that a journalist might be able to try and shed some understanding and enlightenment on a region that is profoundly conflicted, and a conflict that has real consequences for Americans. View quote
Lawrence Wright
Islam and the West have clashed in the past and have not clashed. There is nothing inevitable about it. View quote
Lawrence Wright
I feel like a 1960s graduate student. I still work on note cards. I've never found a better system. View quote
Lawrence Wright
The ideal 'New Yorker' profile is a person, an interesting person, at a critical point in his life. View quote
Lawrence Wright
This age of terror will end one day, but whether our society can restore the feeling of freedom that once was our birthright is hard to predict. View quote
Lawrence Wright
It's their belief, their own will, that holds people in Scientology, even oftentimes when they have been abused. View quote
Lawrence Wright
Our intelligence community was extremely poorly prepared before 9/11. View quote
Lawrence Wright
I've always worried that one day women would figure out how to get along without us and they would be able to reproduce unilaterally, like sponges. (Lawrence Wright)
Scientology is not a terrorist organization. Scientology has used intimidating tactics and vindictive litigation. View quote
Lawrence Wright
The Israelis and the Palestinians don't know each other. They live right there, but they've become strangers. And it makes it much more difficult to make peace with a person you really don't know, and that's an obstacle in itself. View quote
Lawrence Wright
I guess I made a resolution years ago that I would only do things that were only really important or really fun. View quote
Lawrence Wright
I don't dispute Scientology can help people; I think that is a very important fact to keep in mind. View quote
Lawrence Wright
I get very antsy when I'm not occupied. View quote
Lawrence Wright
If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people. View quote
Lawrence Wright
If you're on a contract at 'The New Yorker,' the contract specifies the number of words you will publish in the magazine per year. I get paid by the word, like most writers. That's one reason why the Scientology article was 25,000 words long! View quote
Lawrence Wright
I'm grateful for the ascendancy of women in business and politics, which may yet advance the humanity of those callings. View quote
Lawrence Wright
What is interesting to me about film, and documentary film in particular, is that I can write about these people, and you trust my judgment, more or less, but when you're confronted yourself with humans who are right there on the screen telling you their story, you make a judgment yourself that is conclusive. View quote
Lawrence Wright
If you look at Mormonism, it's a very appealing community. It takes care of itself; there are active charities. It's got a successful work ethic. Whatever you might think about the authenticity of their theology or their history, it's immaterial in terms of how the religion itself actually functions. (Lawrence Wright)
It's easy enough to predict that there will be conflict, but you place yourself in a maelstrom when you offer a view about the conflict, and I don't have an investment in one side or the other; I feel compassion for both sides. I've spent a fair amount of time in Gaza and Israel, done a lot of reporting and lived over there, and the tragedy is sometimes overwhelming. At the same time, America does have an investment in what happens. View quote
Lawrence Wright
I think when I write movies and plays and books and magazine articles, they're all storytelling, and reality is the common denominator that binds them. View quote
Lawrence Wright
It's funny how sometimes historians sneer at journalists, yet they depend on us in the future for the material that they mine. You realize that some of the stories wouldn't have been told if you hadn't gotten to them. There is that sense of capturing a moment that was just about to go over the horizon. View quote
Lawrence Wright