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 Read Quote
Craziness doesn’t have anything to do with how successful a religion might be. Lawrence Wright Read Quote
Religions prosper in large part because of the communities that they create. Lawrence Wright Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
The 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. and coalition partners stands as one of the greatest blunders in American history. The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, rose out of the the chaos, throwing the region into turmoil that hasn’t been equaled since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence Wright Read Quote
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 Read Quote
When you’re first starting on a project, you feel shy because you don’t know very much, and you know that you’re going to be ignorant and seem ignorant. Lawrence Wright Read Quote
