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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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