Chronology can be dangerous. You can get so linear that it becomes robotic for the reader. Lawrence Wright More Quotes by Lawrence Wright More Quotes From Lawrence Wright There are many different rivers that lead into despair: there's poverty; there's political repression; there's gender apartheid - there's a sense of culture loss; there's religious fanaticism. Lawrence Wright religious loss rivers 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. Lawrence Wright support bridges thinking 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. Lawrence Wright institutions personality people 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. Lawrence Wright faithful church real 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. Lawrence Wright anxiety cutting mind 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. Lawrence Wright egypt teaching two 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. Lawrence Wright nashville race rights 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 realizing moments sometimes 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. Lawrence Wright technology trying people Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Lawrence Wright alternatives destiny fiction 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 auras movement organization 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 trying interesting 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 people ideas thinking 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 goal book 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 writing book reality 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 emotional giving thinking 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 risk giving country 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 palestinian president opportunity 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 black men war 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
