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" I was a very religious teenager, and I moved away from that. "

Lawrence Wright

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" Religions prosper in large part because of the communities that they create. "

Lawrence Wright

" I was in Austin on 9/11, and there were no flights, so I couldn't get to New York to cover the story, so I had to find more creative ways. "

Lawrence Wright

" Every form has its merits. And I like to work in a lot of different forms. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" The Israelis and the Palestinians don't know each other. They live right there, but they've become strangers. And it makes it much more difficult to make peace with a person you really don't know, and that's an obstacle in itself. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" I don't dispute Scientology can help people; I think that is a very important fact to keep in mind. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" A donkey is a very useful beast of burden. "

Lawrence Wright

" Scientology plays an outsize role in the cast of new religions that have arisen in the 20th century and survived into the 21st. "

Lawrence Wright

" For my parents, leaving the close social quarters of Abilene was like getting out of jail. They were not true West Texans; they had not come to love the unending monotony of mesquite barrens or the high, hot blue sky that made sunsets a matter of prayerful thankfulness. "

Lawrence Wright

" Our intelligence community was extremely poorly prepared before 9/11. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" The ideal 'New Yorker' profile is a person, an interesting person, at a critical point in his life. "

Lawrence Wright

" If you're on a contract at 'The New Yorker,' the contract specifies the number of words you will publish in the magazine per year. I get paid by the word, like most writers. That's one reason why the Scientology article was 25,000 words long! "

Lawrence Wright

" The lovely thing about the writing life is that you can point it in any direction. "

Lawrence Wright

" If you call it al-Qaida or bin Ladenism or jihadism, whatever you call it, it's proliferated. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" Contempt for men pervades the most obscure strata of our society. "

Lawrence Wright

" Craziness doesn't have anything to do with how successful a religion might be. "

Lawrence Wright

" I've always been intrigued by why people believe one thing over another. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" To an outsider, Abilene was like a small landfall in the Sargasso Sea - remote, laconic, and forever closed to strangers. "

Lawrence Wright

" I guess I made a resolution years ago that I would only do things that were only really important or really fun. "

Lawrence Wright

" I get very antsy when I'm not occupied. "

Lawrence Wright

" The Middle East has been a part of my life since I was a young man, when I went to teach in Cairo. "

Lawrence Wright

" Scientology is not a terrorist organization. Scientology has used intimidating tactics and vindictive litigation. "

Lawrence Wright