Quotes from Lawrence Wright

The British census of Palestine in 1922 recorded 84,000 Jews and 670,000 Arabs, of whom 71,000 were Christian, most of the remainder being Muslim.

Maybe it's an insanity test, Haggis thought—if you believe it, you're automatically kicked out. He considered that possibility. But when he read it again, he decided, "This is madness.

The U.S. is such an unusual place in the world because you can believe anything you want.

When I went to Egypt right after 9/11 I was very upset. I used to live in Egypt. I had a lot of friends there. I spent two years teaching there. I had very fond feelings for that part of the world, and the fact that a culture I liked so much had attacked my own culture was really very upsetting to me.

To an outsider, Abilene was like a small landfall in the Sargasso Sea - remote, laconic, and forever closed to strangers.

The Israelis and the Palestinians don't know each other. They live right there, but they've become strangers. And it makes it much more difficult to make peace with a person you really don't know, and that's an obstacle in itself.

Contempt for men pervades the most obscure strata of our society.

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

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.

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.

A donkey is a very useful beast of burden.

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.

There are many countries where you can only believe more or you can believe less. But in the United States we have this incredible smorgasbord, and it really interests me why people are drawn to one faith rather than another, especially to a system of belief that to an outsider seems absurd or dangerous.

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

I love apples. I actually do eat an apple a day.

I'm grateful for the ascendancy of women in business and politics, which may yet advance the humanity of those callings.

I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.

Scientology is not a terrorist organization. Scientology has used intimidating tactics and vindictive litigation.

The lovely thing about the writing life is that you can point it in any direction.