Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

“Only Poe could have dreamed the rest.”

— Erik Larson

I find diplomatic histories the dullest of histories.

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

— Erik Larson

Unalloyed heroes and unalloyed villains make me suspicious.

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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.'

— Erik Larson

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…

— Erik Larson

With my research, I really need absolute confirmation of what actually happened, direct physical connections to the past.

— Erik Larson

I'm often associated with parallel narratives or dual narratives. The 'Devil in the White City' was a fluke.

— Erik Larson

“As the light began to fade, the architects lit the library’s gas jets, which hissed like mildly perturbed cats.”

— Erik Larson

“Her blind endorsement of Hitler’s regime first faded to a kind of sympathetic skepticism, but as summer approached,”

— Erik Larson

“But I had at least hoped to find some decent people around Hitler. I am horrified to discover that the whole gang…

— Erik Larson

“Once built, the Montauk was so novel, so tall, it defied description by conventional means. No one knows who coined the term,…

— Erik Larson

In Washington, we had a grieving President Wilson, very, very much a lonely, grieving man. He had lost his wife of many…

— Erik Larson

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…

— Erik Larson

“I have all my life been considering distant effects and always sacrificing immediate success and applause to that of the future,” he…

— Erik Larson

“I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when…

— Erik Larson

I don't really have a bucket list, but if I did, one entry would be to dust off my college Russian and…

— Erik Larson

I'm open to writing just about anything. I love writing the books that I write. They do tend to be on dark…

— Erik Larson

I was once again looking for a book idea, and I remembered Holmes, but I specifically remembered that there was this World's…

— Erik Larson

Digression is my passion. I love telling the main stories, but in some ways, what I love most is using those narratives…

— Erik Larson

“Let me explain how such a thing might occasionally happen,' Goebbels said. 'All during the twelve years of the Weimar Republic our…

— Erik Larson

The thing I always tell my writing students - I'm not a full-time instructor, by any means, but periodically I've taught writing…

— 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

“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 could bear the idea of the White City lying empty and desolate. A Cosmopolitan writer said, "Better to have it…

— 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

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

— 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

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

— 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

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

— Erik Larson

“The thing that weighed on him most, however, was the irrationality of the world in which he now found himself. To some…

— Erik Larson

“Like most people, I acquired my initial sense of the era from books and photographs that left me with the impression that…

— 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