What You've Learned From Being a Journalist in the Middle East

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I understandt the critique that people make outsiders, because in most of my stories, i am that outsider. I'm very grateful for the fact that the soudies wouldn't let me in as a journalist. It helped me tell that story so much better than i could have otherwise. And it's always been a lesson to me about the need for immersion, to try to get in as deeply as you can. The great material is there when you finally get further in, you know.

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker.

”There’s nothing more important about a person than their story. In a way, that’s who we are. And yet, memories fade and people die. So those stories disappear and the job of the journalist is to go out before that happens and accumulate the kinds of stories that are going to help us understand who we are, why we are, where we are right now in time, and try to thread those stories into a coherent narrative. In a way, you give it a kind of immortality. And that’s a big job. It’s a great privilege.”

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