Lee Smith > Quotes

“The sociology of Washington, on the other hand, is not only more political but also more gullible, more cynical. It’s a city of half a million student council presidents, ready to adopt any opinion that advances their careers.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“Whether we are writing fiction or nonfiction, journaling or writing for publication, writing itself is an inherently therapeutic activity. Simply to line up words one after another upon a page is to create some order where it did not exist, to give a recognizable shape to the chaos of our lives. Writing cannot bring our loved ones back, but it can sometimes fix them in our fleeting memories a s they were in life, and it can always help us make it through the night.”
― Lee Smith

“penalties being imposed by President Barack Obama,”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“I've been trying to pay attention ever since, realizing that writing is not about fame, or even publication. It is not about exalted language, abstract themes, or the escapades of glamorous people. It is about our won real world and our won real lives and understanding what happens to us day by day, it is about playing with children and listening to old people.”
― Lee Smith

“the American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them [...]

The one-word motto they came to live by was globalism—that is, the freedom to structure commercial relationships and social enterprises without reference to the well-being of the particular society in which they happened to make their livings and raise their children.

[...] the elite that Friedman described saw enlightened Chinese autocracy as a friend and even as a model”
― Lee Smith

“A layer of cultural conservatism still covers Dixie like the dew. As a whole, we Southerners are still religious, and we are still violent. We'll bring you a casserole, but we'll kill you too.”
― Lee Smith

“Somebody once said that there are only two plots in fiction. The first is, somebody takes a trip (The Iliad, The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness). The second one is, a stranger comes to town (Absalom Absalom; The Great Gatsby; The Glass Menagerie). If you think about it, this is absolutely true.”
― Lee Smith

“The mountains that used to imprison my have become my chosen stalking ground.”
― Lee Smith

“the American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them [...]

The one-word motto they came to live by was globalism—that is, the freedom to structure commercial relationships and social enterprises without reference to the well-being of the particular society in which they happened to make their livings and raise their children.

[They] saw enlightened Chinese autocracy as a friend and even as a model”
― Lee Smith

“Mueller produced a perfect feedback loop: intelligence leakers spin a false story to the media, the media publishes the story, Mueller cites the story, and the media and the Democrats then fake outrage at Mueller’s findings.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“In writing about the Russia Report, journalists were covering an investigation of a series of abuses and crimes in which they’d participated. And so, because they themselves were part of the scandal, it wasn’t a scandal.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“Many of the twenty stories cited by the Pulitzer committee were sourced to leaks of classified information. Thus the print press had bestowed its highest honor on rogue FBI and DOJ officials who’d coordinated with media operatives in a plot to topple the president.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“the Nobel Peace Prize–winning president was complicit in the campaign of sectarian slaughter in Syria, the largest humanitarian catastrophe of the twenty-first century.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“I have always felt that one of the most important functions of any good writing teacher is to serve as a sort of matchmaker--"fixing up" a new writer with the fiction of a successful published author whose work comes out of a similar background, place, sensibility, or life experience.”
― Lee Smith

“WITHOUT THE BIG TITLES and the national security bureaucracy’s legalistic self-defense mechanisms, the story was pretty straightforward: The Clintons hired a bunch of con men who got their dirty cop friends to frame Trump. The press and a corrupt prosecutor handled the cover-up.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“Uniquely, this coup, the Paper Coup, was conducted openly. The journalists who could have exposed the plot went to the same parties as the spies.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“The media simply didn’t care if the reporting was transparently false so long as it furthered the preposterous narrative that Trump and his associates were Russian agents.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“Blackburn’s previous research focused on Islamist terror groups, putting him in touch with senior leaders of global intelligence agencies. He became interested in the Papadopoulos case when he noticed that the photographs of Mifsud he found online were of the former Maltese diplomat posing with Western political, diplomatic, and intelligence figures. Why wouldn’t a trained intelligence officer like Strzok find the same? “Maybe the FBI doesn’t know how to use Google,” says Blackburn, laughing huskily.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“However, it’s worth keeping in mind that “one side of the aisle” was pushing a conspiracy theory in partnership with intelligence bureaucrats, political operatives, and a media industry that cloaked its role behind a pretense of objectivity.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“It was the culmination of the first campaign in US history waged, funded, and staffed to defend the systematic corruption of rogue law enforcement officials.”
― Lee Smith, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History

“When you write fiction, you up the ante, generally speaking, since real life rarely affords enough excitement or conflict to spice up a page sufficiently. This passage also illustrates another technique that has saved my neck--maybe even my life--many times: the use of humor to allow us to talk or write about the scariest things, things we couldn't articulate and deal with otherwise. It is another way of whistling past the graveyard.”
― Lee Smith