Lawrence Wright Quotes - Page 2

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• Hubbard set up the Church of Scientology in Hollywood in 1954 for a reason. He understood that celebrity was increasingly a feature of American public life, and celebrities themselves were going to be worshipped as minor deities were in the ancient world. The idea was: if you could get them, think how many people would follow.

  Lawrence Wright

  Thinking, Ideas, People

  "Renowned journalist throws the book at Scientology". Interview with Daniel Burke, www.washingtonpost.com. January 31, 2013.

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• 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.

  Lawrence Wright

  Organization, Movement, Auras

  "Lawrence Wright on 'Going Clear'". Interview with Mark Guarino, www.chicagotribune.com. January 18, 2013.

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• IRS is very poorly equipped to make a distinction between what is a religion and what is not.

  Lawrence Wright

  Irs, Distinction

  "Lawrence Wright on 'Going Clear'". Interview with Mark Guarino, www.chicagotribune.com. January 18, 2013.

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• 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

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• 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.

  Lawrence Wright

  Country, Believe, People

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• I feel like a 1960s graduate student. I still work on note cards. I've never found a better system.

  Lawrence Wright

  Cards, Students, Graduates

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• Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny.

  Lawrence Wright

  Destiny, Alternatives, Fiction

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

  Lawrence Wright

  Dangerous

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.

  Lawrence Wright

  Book, Writing, Feet

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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