Quotes from Lawrence Wright

The main object of the Islamists' struggle was to impose Islamic law—Sharia. They believe that the five hundred Quranic verses that constitute the basis of Sharia are the immutable commandments of God, offering a road back to the perfected era of the Prophet and his immediate successors—although the legal code actually evolved several centuries after the Prophet's death.

When a[n Afghan Arab] fighter fell, his comrades would congratulate him and weep because they were not also slain in battle.

Had the Chinese been more open about the disease when it first appeared, many people might have spared.

What leadership? Tildy thought. The president had been almost entirely absent in the debate about how to deal with the contagion, except to blame the opposing party for ignoring public health needs before he took office.

He believed the definite loss of freedom was worse than the possible loss of life.

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common.

morem pellis hispidus distentione nervorum—

The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here.

Testosterone blends easily with your own hormones.… You have no fear of what any woman may think of your bed conduct. You know you are a master. You know they will be thrilled. You can come many times without weariness.… Many women are not capable of pleasure in sex and anything adverse they say or do has no effect whatever upon your pleasure. You have no fear if they conceive. What if they do? You do not care. Pour it into them and let fate decide.

The Trade Center dead formed a kind of universal parliament.

dark, with a mustache and a deep, resonant voice. In Kamel's opinion, Sadat wore "eccentric clothes"—a dark gray suit, a red-checked waistcoat, and an especially notable pair of white leather shoes, quite an outfit for a man on the run. Sadat immediately understood how he could employ Kamel's little "murder society," as he called it. Shooting a handful of British soldiers

Global Health Security Index," a sober report of a world largely unprepared to deal with a pandemic.

For Fauci, science was a self-correcting compass, always pointed at the truth. For Trump, the truth was Play-doh, and he could twist it to fit the shape of his desire.

when good people do good, and evil people do evil, it is not surprising. But when good people do evil, it takes religion to do that.

One can drive across Texas and be in two different states at the same time: AM Texas and FM Texas. FM Texas is the silky voice of city dwellers in the kingdom of NPR. It is progressive, blue, reasonable, secular, and smug—almost like California. AM Texas speaks to the suburbs and the rural areas—Trumpland. It's endless bluster and endless ads. Paranoia and piety are the main items on the menu. Alex Jones is Texas's main contribution

The manifold ways in which they [the victims of 9/11] attached to life testified to the Quranic injunction that the taking of a single life destroys a universe. Al-Qaeda had aimed its attacks at America, but it struck all of humanity.

If peace was really within reach wasn't it immoral to fail?

The church claims that the document is a forgery.

Scientologists are trained to believe that whatever happens to them is somehow their fault, so much of the discussion in the Hole centered on what they had done to deserve this fate. The possibility that the leader of the church might be irrational or even insane was so taboo that no one could even think it, much less voice it aloud.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a lobby group created by the Church of Scientology that runs the psychiatry museum, maintains that no mental diseases have ever been proven to exist.

The largest secessionist page, "Heart of Texas," was among the Russian propaganda sites that Facebook shut down; it had more followers than the official Texas Democrat and Texas Republican party Facebook pages combined.

Americans already believed Carter was wasting too much time on the Middle East when there were more pressing problems at home. The country was experiencing double-digit inflation coupled with high unemployment and anemic growth—a confounding phenomenon tagged "stagflation." As for the president's job performance, the two dreaded lines on the graph finally crossed in the spring of 1978, with more Americans disapproving

Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and that to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil.

Larry Kudlow, the president's chief economic adviser, had been questioning the seriousness of the situation. He couldn't square the apocalyptic forecasts with the bouyant stock market. "Is all the money dumb?" he wondered. "Everyone's asleep at the switch? I just have a hard time believing that."*