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" Journalism is a flawed profession, but it has a self-correcting mechanism. The rule of journalism is: talk to everybody. "

Lawrence Wright

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" From the very beginning, when you go into Scientology your world narrows down very quickly. "

Lawrence Wright

" Oftentimes, when I was reporting on conflict somewhere in the world or prison or wherever I might be, I'd be struck by the fact that religious beliefs were sometimes transformative, sometimes a motivation for violence. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Lawrence Wright

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

Lawrence Wright

" If you get into Scientology, you will go to auditing. It's like therapy except that there is an E-meter between you and your auditor. That's a device that actually measures your galvanic skin responses. It's two metal cans that you hold. They used to be Campbell's Soup cans with the label scraped off. "

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

" In places where money comes out of the ground, luck and a willingness to take risks are the main denominators that determine one's future, not talent or education or hard work. Money that is so easily acquired somehow comes to seem well deserved, because those who have it must be either uniquely perspicacious or divinely favored. "

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

" 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

" It's their belief, their own will, that holds people in Scientology, even oftentimes when they have been abused. "

Lawrence Wright

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

Lawrence Wright

" I've always worried that one day women would figure out how to get along without us and they would be able to reproduce unilaterally, like sponges. "

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

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

Lawrence Wright

" 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. "

Lawrence Wright

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

Lawrence Wright

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

Lawrence Wright

" What I've learned is that everybody really wants to sell their story. No matter who they are, everybody feels that what they're doing is the right thing, and if they could only explain themselves to a reasonable person that understands them, then maybe they'll listen. "

Lawrence Wright

The Right Thing

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

Lawrence Wright

" Life gives you so many alternatives to choose from, and... you judge these as best as you can until something comes along like 9/11. And it's the central event of my lifetime, so I knew I had to write about that. "

Lawrence Wright

" I spent two years in Cairo, and I felt a certain urgency about trying to understand the region and the conflict here, in the modest way that a journalist might be able to try and shed some understanding and enlightenment on a region that is profoundly conflicted, and a conflict that has real consequences for Americans. "

Lawrence Wright

" Islam and the West have clashed in the past and have not clashed. There is nothing inevitable about it. "

Lawrence Wright

" What is interesting to me about film, and documentary film in particular, is that I can write about these people, and you trust my judgment, more or less, but when you're confronted yourself with humans who are right there on the screen telling you their story, you make a judgment yourself that is conclusive. "

Lawrence Wright

" This age of terror will end one day, but whether our society can restore the feeling of freedom that once was our birthright is hard to predict. "

Lawrence Wright

" I think the commentarian has taken over, so now what you get is a lot less reporting and more opinion. "

Lawrence Wright

" I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. "

Lawrence Wright