Quotes from Lawrence Wright

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I like the serendipitous surprises of reality.

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

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.

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

Dallas was a place where dreamers like my father were given a chance.

Dallas was not a caring city, but it was efficient.

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

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.

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

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

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

The ceremony, likely aided by narcotics and hallucinogens, required Hubbard to channel the female deity of Babalon as Parsons performed the "invocation of wand with material basis on talisman"—in other words, masturbating on a piece of parchment. He typically invoked twice a night.

At best, Henry had only slowed an inevitable, history-shaping pandemic. Governments would fall. Economies would collapse. Wars would arise. Why did we think that our own modern era was immune to the assault of humanity's most cunning and relentless enemy, the microbe?

There is no question that a belief system can have positive, transformative effects on people's lives. Many current and former Scientologists have attested to the value of their training and the insight they derived from their study of the religion. They have the right to believe whatever they choose. But it is a different matter to use the protections afforded a religion by the First Amendment to falsify history, to propagate forgeries, and to cover up human-rights abuses.

Wherever you are, death will find you, even in the looming tower. O

The final exercise (according to documents obtained by WikiLeaks—Haggis refused to talk about it) was "Go out to a park, train station or other busy area. Practice placing an intention into individuals until you can successfully and easily place an intention into or on a Being and/or a body.

However, twelve former Sea Org members told me that Miscavige had assaulted them; twenty-one have told me or testified in court that they have witnessed one or more assaults on other church staff members by their leader.

Radicalism usually prospers in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities.

Begin claimed that Sadat's visit to Jerusalem was merely a grand gesture, and that what Sadat really wanted was a Palestinian state and