Latest Lawrence Wright Quotes from Interviews

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• In my couple of books, including Going Clear, the book about Scientology, I thought it seemed appropriate at the end of the book to help the reader frame things. Because we've gone through the history, and there's likely conflictual feelings in the reader's mind. The reader may not agree with me, but I don't try to influence the reader's judgment. I know everybody who picks this book up already has a decided opinion. But my goal is to open the reader's mind a little bit to alternative narratives.

  Lawrence Wright

  Couple, Book, Goal

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It's the hardening of these narratives that makes peace so difficult. If each side can see the narrative, the claims that the other has, then there is a much more likely possibility of making a resolution. But what I see is the opposite. There is a total disclaiming of the validity of the other side, and talk that I find really unsettling, the kind of chatter you get from ultra-right Israelis and Hamas is of annihilation. In that kind of dialogue, there's no way to move toward peace.

  Lawrence Wright

  Moving, Kind, Resolution

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Lawrence Wright

  Sometimes, Realizing, Moments

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• When I'm writing about complicated subjects, it usually involves a world. It could be the world of Scientology or the world of Al Qaeda, or the world of counter-terrorism.I look for emblematic beasts of burden - what I call "donkeys" - who can carry the reader through this world. They serve a different purpose. Donkeys are not especially interesting or likeable, but they are serviceable. They will take you into this world. The distinction I'm trying to make is: It's not about them. It's about the world.

  Lawrence Wright

  Writing, Interesting, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think we give Jimmy Carter too much credit to think he knew what was going to happen when he used the word "apartheid." It's provocative, but it was like a nuclear bomb in Israel. And yet that word is used all the time in the Israeli press. There's a double standard there. He probably picked it up in Israel, as it's commonly discussed. I'd be a little surprised if he understood how it was going to be used against him. He doesn't have a highly developed emotional detector. As a politician, that was a weakness.

  Lawrence Wright

  Thinking, Emotional, Giving

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Look at what Jimmy Carter did. Look at the risks he took for a country that wasn't his. Israel has benefited unbelievably from that. To fail to give him credit seems unfair.

  Lawrence Wright

  Country, Giving, Risk

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• We've been sending billions and billions of dollars to Israel and Egypt for decades to keep the peace. So as an American taxpayer, I have an interest in this. It's galling to feel that as an American I have a higher stake, a higher interest in peace than you do.

  Lawrence Wright

  Interest

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I grew up in the American South, the segregated South. Now we have a black man who is president. It was an age of apartheid, and now that's over. It was an age of two superpowers frozen in a cold war, and now that's resolved. So history marches on, except for this Arab-Israel conflict, which seems to have a claim on being eternal.

  Lawrence Wright

  War, Men, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Jimmy Carter is not loved in Israel, and yet no American president gave them a greater gift than Jimmy Carter gave them with peace with Egypt, and the opportunity to make peace with the Palestinians.

  Lawrence Wright

  Opportunity, President, Palestinian

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Lawrence Wright

  Compassion, Tragedy, Done

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• When you look at the science and the genetic studies that have been done on Palestinians and Jews, you find that there is a unity. They're both descended from the Canaanites. They're essentially the same people.

  Lawrence Wright

  People, Unity, Done

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• We hear a lot about theological justifications for the conflicts, but very little about the scientific evidence, which in no way supports them. The time period in which Moses was leading his people out of Egypt, into the Promised Land, the Promised Land was Egypt. We know that. Archaeological records are very clear. The Egyptians were avid bureaucrats even in those days and kept very scrupulous records. I think it's important for us to realize this conflict is built on a legend. It has no scientific support.

  Lawrence Wright

  Thinking, People, Support

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Chronology can be dangerous. You can get so linear that it becomes robotic for the reader.

  Lawrence Wright

  Dangerous

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• If we're talking about Sinai, we can't understand it without the 1967 and 1973 wars, and you can't understand it without the biblical story of Moses leading his people through the wilderness. These are essential elements in the modern conversation about what's going on in the Middle East that seem to have been lost.

  Lawrence Wright

  War, Biblical, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Lawrence Wright

  Book, Writing, Reality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Having written Camp David as a drama, I could see the drama maybe a little more clearly when I wrote the book.

  Lawrence Wright

  Drama, Book

  Source: www.guernicamag.com