Words matter. These are the best Lawrence Wright Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’m grateful for the ascendancy of women in business and politics, which may yet advance the humanity of those callings.
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.
If you look at all those terrorist groups – I’m talking, going back, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, ISIS – they’re all proxy armies in an Islamic civil war.
When I was in the ninth grade, I had a teacher in Dallas, Texas, named Elizabeth Enlow in English class. Every Friday, we had to write a little essay, and you had to incorporate three particular words into the story. That was the sole direction. And to me, this was so much fun.
Contempt for men pervades the most obscure strata of our society.
I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.
People often pulled into Scientology want to address personal problems in their life, and Scientology says we have technology that addresses these kinds of problems. Just focusing on the problems and trying to remedy them can be helpful.
The U.S. is such an unusual place in the world because you can believe anything you want.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. and coalition partners stands as one of the greatest blunders in American history. The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, rose out of the the chaos, throwing the region into turmoil that hasn’t been equaled since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Journalism is a flawed profession, but it has a self-correcting mechanism. The rule of journalism is: talk to everybody.
When the price of oil goes up, the entire Texas economy takes a deep breath. Millionaires blossom like rain lilies. News races through the countryside that the money train is pulling into the station. Hop on board!
I deplore sexual harassment.
People love to talk about the things that are important to them, but oftentimes as a journalist, if you’re entering a world that’s pretty esoteric and difficult to penetrate and has many barriers to outsiders, then the people inside that world just don’t have the same language as you do.
From the very beginning of this movement, Scientology has always been a very closeted organization. That aura of secrecy is something that the present-day management continues.
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.
A donkey is a very useful beast of burden.
If you call it al-Qaida or bin Ladenism or jihadism, whatever you call it, it’s proliferated.
I guess I made a resolution years ago that I would only do things that were only really important or really fun.
What I’ve learned is that everybody really wants to sell their story. No matter who they are, everybody feels that what they’re doing is the right thing, and if they could only explain themselves to a reasonable person that understands them, then maybe they’ll listen.
If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.
To me the notion that Palestinians are actually Jews is, I think, quite revelatory and very radical and a possible bridge that has been ignored, I think, in this entire controversy and there’s ample evidence to support it.
Our intelligence community was extremely poorly prepared before 9/11.
Certainly, the two things Scientology has on its side are money and lawyers, but those qualities won’t save it if it can’t find a way to bring new members into the fold.
From the very beginning, when you go into Scientology your world narrows down very quickly.
I don’t dispute Scientology can help people; I think that is a very important fact to keep in mind.
I don’t want to constantly be writing about terrorism and strife.
I don’t hold America responsible for the largely oppressive governments in the 22 Arab countries. There are repressive Arab governments that are our allies and there are those that are our nominal enemies. It doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to what extent we’re involved in propping up those governments.
I get very antsy when I’m not occupied.
A documentary film is a great way of helping people understand because, somehow, when one is able to see the people involved, it lends a certain immediacy and understanding that is hard to get on the page.
I love apples. I actually do eat an apple a day.
I feel like a 1960s graduate student. I still work on note cards. I’ve never found a better system.
When I was trained as a journalist, as a race-relations reporter in Nashville covering the end of the civil-rights movement, we were strictly forbidden to use the first-person pronoun. There was kind of an electric charge around it. To come out from hiding and use the word ‘I’ carried a lot of fright for me.
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.
I think the commentarian has taken over, so now what you get is a lot less reporting and more opinion.
Societies that depend on natural resources tend to have certain inherent problems. The limited concentration of wealth – whether from oil, coal, diamonds, or bauxite – often leads to corruption and authoritarianism.
You can’t tell a story linearly if you want people to understand.
There are many countries where you can only believe more or you can believe less. But in the United States we have this incredible smorgasbord, and it really interests me why people are drawn to one faith rather than another, especially to a system of belief that to an outsider seems absurd or dangerous.
Dallas was not a caring city, but it was efficient.
I got my initiation into the Middle East in 1969 when I went there to teach at the American University in Cairo for two years.
Craziness doesn’t have anything to do with how successful a religion might be.
