Quotes from Lawrence Wright

The example of this poor, dark-skinned man who turned the empire upside-down made a deep impression on the young Sadat. "I began to imitate him," he writes. "I took off all my clothes, covered myself from the waist down with an apron, made myself a spindle, and withdrew to a solitary nook on the roof of our house in Cairo.

That fact was not acknowledged by government officials until nearly a month later; instead, authorities instructed the medical staff not to wear masks or gowns because they might give rise to panic.

The Borough of Manhattan gratefully declared March 13 (Hubbard's birthday), 2004, as "Hubbard Detoxification Day.

The crown prince laughed. "But this is the flu!" he said. "We have the flu every year! We all get the flu, even the royal family!

You've got East Texas, which is Creole, with the field greens and okra. In West Texas you have the Hispanic influence and the chiles. North Texas, you had the cattle drives. In the south and the Gulf, I wanted to give the sense of a true Southern fishing camp. Then in Central Texas you have the Czech and German influences.

It was the launch of an unprecedented career. (He would go on to publish more books than any other author, according to the 2006 Guinness World Records, with 1,084 titles.)

human tragedy of potentially biblical proportions." He added: "The challenge we face is how to act with sufficient strength and speed to prevent the recession from morphing into a prolonged depression

inflection point, when society will make a radical adjustment, for good or ill.

He had the unfortunate combination of being garrulous without being articulate.

The struggle of Islam, as Qutb had framed it, and as Azzam deeply believed, was against jahiliya -- the world of unbelief that had existed before Islam, which was still corrupting and undermining the faithful with the lures of materialism, secularism, and sexual equality.

Despair and idleness are dangerous companions in any culture, and it was inevitable that the young would search for a hero who could voice their longing for change and provide a focus for their rage.

Political divisiveness doesn't lend itself to having a coordinated, cooperative, collaborative response against a common enemy. There is also this pushback in society against anything authoritative.

The danger in holding on to a myth is that it becomes like a religion we've stopped believing in. It no longer instructs us; it only stultifies is. And besides, what do we want with a myth that makes us into people we don't want to be?

The FBI opened hundreds of investigations. Among the ironies was the fact that more than $850,000 went to five anti-vaccine groups.

Alone, alienated, and often far from his family, the exile turned to the mosque, where he found companionship and the consolation of religion. Islam provided the element of commonality. It was more than a faith -- it was an identity.

The international students at the college occupied an uneasy place in this charged racial environment. Students from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, as well as a number of Hawaiians, formed the core of the International Club, which Qutb joined. The college also hosted a small Middle Eastern community, including recent Palestinian refugees

THIS MEANS THE LAST REASON TO HAVE PSYCHIATRY AROUND IS GONE

Koppel won an Emmy for that show. Miscavige took credit for it, saying, "I got Ted the Emmy." He even had a replica of an Emmy made and placed in the Officers Lounge at Gold Base. But he never went on television again.

Hubbard says there are actually two separate genetic lines that, in the history of evolution, first came together in the mollusk

It's a feeling—I'm going to die anyway, so I might as well risk this virus that I can't see, to speak about the virus of systemic racism that I can.

keep a person on the Scientology path," Hubbard once told one of his associates, "feed him a mystery sandwich.

Some people carry this philosophy too far. They look at the damage mankind does to the natural world, and they forget that humans are animals as well, and also deserving of reverence.

We're like schoolchildren playing with matches. One day we'll burn the house down.

She was made to stand in a garbage can for twelve hours, as the other detainees demanded that she confess her own "homosexual tendencies.