Erik Larson Quotes

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Erik Larson

Profession : Author

Birth : January 3, 1954

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

Erik Larson

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

Erik Larson

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

Erik Larson

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.

Erik Larson

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?

Erik Larson

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.

Erik Larson

I pride myself on having a journalistic remove.

Erik Larson

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.

Erik Larson

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

Erik Larson

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.

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

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'.

Erik Larson

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.

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 I start reading, I thought now this is interesting, you know, the hows of what happened, the actual - the actual sinking of the ship.

Erik Larson

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.

Erik Larson

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

Erik Larson

Unalloyed heroes and unalloyed villains make me suspicious.

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

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.

Erik Larson

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.

Erik Larson