Erik Larson Quotes

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Last Updated on May 30, 2021

Book
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Nov 07, 2020

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

Aware
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Nov 07, 2020

I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.

Diary
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Nov 07, 2020

I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.

Living
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Nov 07, 2020

We, of course, have the power of hindsight in our arsenal, but people living in Berlin in that era didn't. What would that have been like as this darkness fell over Germany?

Diplomats
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Nov 07, 2020

Hitler was such an anomalous character - he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world... felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany.

Myself
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Nov 07, 2020

I pride myself on having a journalistic remove.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

There's something so relentless and foul about Hitler and his people, and the way things progressed from year to year. It just got to me in the strangest way.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics.

Mood
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Nov 07, 2020

I don't listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself - kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

Reading is such a personal thing to me. I'd much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore, and let that person choose his or her own books.

Amazing Things
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Nov 07, 2020

One of the really amazing things about the Lusitania saga was that, at the time, there existed in the admiralty a super-secret spy entity known as 'Room 40'.

Man
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Nov 07, 2020

In Washington, we had a grieving President Wilson, very, very much a lonely, grieving man. He had lost his wife of many years in August 1914 at about the same time the war broke out in Europe.

Nov 07, 2020

I didn't know anything about the Lusitania. I started reading because I had nothing else in my plate. And as soon as I start reading, I thought now this is interesting, you know, the hows of what happened, the actual - the actual sinking of the ship.

Feel
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Nov 07, 2020

As a rule, I am very skeptical of tying books to anniversaries. I don't think readers care. I also feel that it just about guarantees that somebody else will be writing a book on the same subject, but being a former journalist, I'm always interested in, like, why write about something today? Why do it now?

Hero
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Nov 07, 2020

Captain William Thomas Turner, hero; villain, Schwieger. As I started doing research into him and into the submarine and so forth, I found that I was growing increasingly sympathetic to him. He's a young guy, 30, handsome, well-liked by his crew, humane.

Nov 07, 2020

I've really tried to strip my writing of as many adjectives and adverbs as I possibly can.

Dangerous
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Nov 07, 2020

I've been asked a lot lately what message is there in the Lusitania for the modern day. To be honest, not much. Except that maybe hubris and overconfidence are always dangerous things.

Make
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Nov 07, 2020

Unalloyed heroes and unalloyed villains make me suspicious.

Love
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Nov 07, 2020

There's a powerful appeal in the 'I didn't know that' effect. I love it when people say, 'Gosh, I didn't know that.'

Fair Trial
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Nov 07, 2020

I went to public school on Long Island, and it seemed every year we were being taught that you had a right to a fair trial and a right to confront your accuser.

Lawyers
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Nov 07, 2020

It troubled me that we had these reports of torture of detainees, we had people jailed at Guantanamo Bay who couldn't even talk to their lawyers and couldn't see the evidence against them - sort of fundamental bedrock civil liberties things.

Death
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Nov 07, 2020

I'd always been interested in maritime history, especially the great liners. I'd have done a book about the Titanic if it hadn't already been done to death by James Cameron and Celine Dion.

Nov 07, 2020

I do think hubris played a role here as well, the belief that the Lusitania was too big and too fast to ever be caught by any submarine, and that, in any case, no U-boat commander would think to attack the ship because to do so would violate the long-held rules governing naval warfare against merchant shipping.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

To me, nuclear weapons are the secret crisis of our time. Frankly, everyone needs to reread John Hersey's 'Hiroshima.'

History
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Nov 07, 2020

That's what I love about history - nuance. I don't believe in unalloyed heroes. Everyone's got warts, and everyone's got a surprise side.

Just
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Nov 07, 2020

I started deliberately looking for characters, ideally outsiders and ideally Americans. So I just started reading widely, as I tell my students to do: read voraciously and promiscuously.

Nov 07, 2020

I found a book facing out that I'd always meant to read: William Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.' About a third of the way through, I suddenly, finally caught up to the fact that Shirer had been there in Berlin, from 1934 on, and was finally kicked out when the U.S. entered the war.

Nov 07, 2020

The SA, that is the - shorthand, those are the storm troopers. Those are the folks who are commanded by Captain Ernst Rohm.

Gestapo
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Nov 07, 2020

In 1933, the Gestapo was founded to become - to be a secret police agency to keep tabs on political opposition and so forth. Brand-new as of April 1933.

He
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Nov 07, 2020

Yes, William E. Dodd was the - became the - America's first ambassador to Nazi Germany. Prior to that, he was a professor of history at the University of Chicago - mild-mannered guy.

President
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Nov 07, 2020

President Hindenburg had ultimate say over whether the government would survive or not.

Passion
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Nov 07, 2020

Digression is my passion. I'm not kidding. I love telling the main stories, but in some ways, what I love most is using those narratives as a way of stringing together the interesting stories that people have kind of forgotten and that are kind of surprising.

Parents
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Nov 07, 2020

Trying to find ideas is the hardest part of my job. You'd think it would be the most fun. Just sitting around reading whatever I want, going to cafes and libraries. But I always feel so unproductive. I think I was raised too well by my parents.

Ideas
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Nov 07, 2020

For 'Thunderstruck', I discarded about a dozen ideas. And then one afternoon, I was thinking about wireless. I don't know why. I guess because it's become so ubiquitous. I was thinking that maybe there's something I could do about the origin of wireless, so I did what any self-respecting person does these days: I Googled 'wireless.'

Detailed
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Nov 07, 2020

My secret weapon is my wife. She's the best judge. She's a scientist and a natural reader. We've developed a detailed code for how she marks a manuscript, and I think it's what saves me from wild digressions.

Enough
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Nov 07, 2020

I usually look for stories with barriers to entry, something complex enough that no one else is going to do it.

Looking
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm always looking for a sign - not in a spooky, supernatural way, but in a 'neurotic writer' kind of way.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

It's like being involved in a detective story, looking for that thing that nobody else has found.

Anything
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Nov 07, 2020

My favorite zone is from 1890 -1915, that zone that spans the overlap of the so-called Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. People had such a boundless sense of optimism; They felt they could do anything they wanted to do, and they went out and tried to do it.

Love
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Nov 07, 2020

The Lusitania is a monument to this optimism, to the hubris of the era. I love that, because where there is hubris, there is tragedy.

Better
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Nov 07, 2020

I've heard from the movie marketplace that James Cameron did such a killer job with 'Titanic' that it's almost impossible to do anything better.

Never
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Nov 07, 2020

I never recreate dialogue. I have often been asked by people, 'You must have made this up because this is dialogue, right?' Anything in my books that is in quotes comes from some kind of living historical document: a letter, a memoir, a court transcript, a newspaper interview.

Peace
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Nov 07, 2020

Every time I sit down to reread 'War and Peace' - I've read it three times - I feel as though I've lived another life.

Go
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Nov 07, 2020

It was David McCullough's 'The Johnstown Flood' that lit my imagination as to how I might one day go about writing book-length nonfiction, though my favorite of his books is 'Mornings on Horseback,' about the young Teddy Roosevelt.

Language
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Nov 07, 2020

I don't really have a bucket list, but if I did, one entry would be to dust off my college Russian and spend a big chunk of a year reading, or trying to read, 'War and Peace' as it was meant to be read, in Russian, with all that rumbly rocks-on-rocks poetry inherent to the language.

Conan
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Nov 07, 2020

I was a promiscuous reader. I loved Nancy Drew books and Tom Swift - never the Hardy Boys - but I also read Dumas, Dickens, Poe, Conan Doyle, and Cornelius Ryan's war books. As to favorite character: I'm torn between Nancy, on whom I had an unseemly crush, and Edmond Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo.

Definitive
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Nov 07, 2020

It's not my intent to write definitive history. 'Dead Wake' isn't a definitive history of the sinking of the Lusitania. It's my account.

Person
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Nov 07, 2020

Anytime you look at someone in detail, you're putting the camera on that person. What I typically look for is one or two or three really strong characters who will hold the narrative throughout the work.

Feel
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Nov 07, 2020

When I'm considering an idea, and there is an element of hubris involved, I generally feel comfortable that it's going to be a good story. Pride goeth before a fall. It's an element of a lot of big stories.

Looking
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Nov 07, 2020

The reason I choose the stories I choose - and it's why it takes me so long to find ideas - is that I'm looking for that very thing. I want an idea that begins, I want a middle that is compelling and will bring readers along, and I definitely want an ending.

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