Erik Larson

Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes.

— Erik Larson

Unalloyed heroes and unalloyed villains make me suspicious.

— Erik Larson

Reading Mission to Paris is like sipping a fine Chateau Margaux: Sublime!

— Erik Larson

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

— Erik Larson

“He signed the letter: George Washington Gale Ferris.”

— Erik Larson

“On August 3 a big Chicago bank, Lazarus Silverman, failed.”

— Erik Larson

I find diplomatic histories the dullest of histories.

— Erik Larson

“Only Poe could have dreamed the rest.”

— Erik Larson

“As I look back on those days, most people in Chicago felt that way. Chicago was host to the world at that…

— Erik Larson

It's essentially taught in high school and college survey courses as an item on a timeline: 'The Lusitania was sunk; the U.S.…

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

The intermittent depression that had shadowed him throughout his adult life was about to envelop him once again.

— Erik Larson

'The Devil in the White City' - the 'White City' was the nickname for the World's Fair of 1893, the World's Columbian…

— Erik Larson

“The world, he said, “must face the sad fact that in an age when international cooperation should be the keyword, nations are…

— Erik Larson

“No system which implies control by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

“Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom that convulsed Germany and at last drove Roosevelt to issue a public condemnation. He told reporters he “could…

— Erik Larson

“In the 1880s Chicago was experiencing explosive growth that propelled land values to levels no one could have imagined, especially within the…

— Erik Larson

In 1900, 45 steamship lines served Galveston. Twenty-six foreign governments had consulates there. The storm damaged its reputation as a safe place…

— Erik Larson

I went to public school on Long Island, and it seemed every year we were being taught that you had a right…

— Erik Larson

When I'm interviewing somebody, I take notes with a Bic Cristal, the classic black-cap, clear-body, medium-weight pen. It works on many levels:…

— Erik Larson

I found a book facing out that I'd always meant to read: William Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.'…

— Erik Larson

I didn't know anything about the Lusitania. I started reading because I had nothing else in my plate. And as soon as…

— Erik Larson

As my friends will tell you, I am a superior agonizer. Believe me, you do not want me in the cockpit of…

— Erik Larson

“TO DODD, PAPEN’S REMARK ranked as one of the most idiotic he had heard since his arrival in Berlin. And he had…

— Erik Larson

I had a nice part at big newspapers, small newspapers, and then I went to a very big newspaper - 'The Wall…

— Erik Larson

“I wear a pony coat with skin like watered silk and muff of lamb. My fingers lie in depths of warmth. I…

— Erik Larson

“For those passengers who did feel unsettled by the German warning, Cunard offered comforting words. Wrote passenger Ambrose B. Cross, “From the…

— Erik Larson

Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill…

— Erik Larson

“Between the lights and the ever-present blue ghosts of the Columbian Guard, the fair achieved another milestone: For the first time Chicagoans…

— Erik Larson

“No one could bear the idea of the White City lying empty and desolate. A Cosmopolitan writer said, "Better to have it…

— Erik Larson

“Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next…

— Erik Larson

“No one wanted the job. What had seemed one of the least challenging tasks facing Franklin D. Roosevelt as newly elected president…

— Erik Larson

“My favorite “trick” is to stop writing at a point where I know that I can pick up easily the next day.…

— Erik Larson

“In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one ever abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and…

— Erik Larson

“He came from plebeian roots and had failed to distinguish himself in any way, not in war, not in work, not in…

— Erik Larson

“Snow fell. Carolers moved among the mansions of Prairie Avenue, pausing now and then to enter the fine houses for hot mulled…

— Erik Larson

“She had a brief affair with a novelist, W. L. River, whose Death of a Young Man had been published several years…

— Erik Larson

“The Chancellor’s assurances were so satisfying and so unexpected that I think they are on the whole too good to be true,”…

— Erik Larson

“Neighbors turned surly; petty jealousies flared into denunciations made to the SA—the Storm Troopers—or to the newly founded Geheime Staatspolizei, only just…

— Erik Larson