"You can't tell a story linearly if you want people to understand."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Lawrence Wright quotes (page 2 of 3)
43 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Every medium has its advantages and weaknesses and there are many things I can put down on paper that I might not be able to put into film or into a stage performance. In each form, one can communicate powerfully in different ways."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"When I went to Egypt right after 9/11 I was very upset. I used to live in Egypt. I had a lot of friends there. I spent two years teaching there. I had very fond feelings for that part of the world, and the fact that a culture I liked so much had attacked my own culture was really very upsetting to me."
Read quote
3 likes
"Paralysis, anxiety stomachs, arthritis and many ills and aberrations have been relieved by auditing them. An E-Meter shows them up and makes them confess their misdeeds. They are probably just compartments of the mind which, cut off, begin to act as though they were persons."
Read quote
3 likes
"Churches are tax exempt because they are supposed to provide a public good. To prove that good to the IRS, churches arent supposed to hoard their money. They are supposed to spend it on goods and services for the faithful. Under this pretense, the church has made massive investments in tax free real estate all over the world. And when it comes to labor costs, they are almost free."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"Coolness is temporary. You can't capture it or create it, it has to be discovered. It has to do with the people that are in a place, not with monuments or institutions. It's a momentary conjunction of personalities."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"I don't want to constantly be writing about terrorism and strife."
Read quote
3 likes
"Chronology can be dangerous. You can get so linear that it becomes robotic for the reader."
Read quote
3 likes
"I don't dispute Scientology can help people; I think that is a very important fact to keep in mind."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"Having written Camp David as a drama, I could see the drama maybe a little more clearly when I wrote the book."
Read quote
3 likes
"I get very antsy when I'm not occupied."
Read quote
3 likes
"Journalism is a flawed profession, but it has a self-correcting mechanism. The rule of journalism is: talk to everybody."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes