Erik Larson Quotes

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Erik Larson

Profession : Author

Birth : January 3, 1954

I find diplomatic histories the dullest of histories.

Erik Larson

The one place where I do think our culture today has to be extremely careful is this whole thing about illegal aliens. Because any time you start defining a significant block of the population as 'others,' or as less than you, you start getting into dangerous waters.

Erik Larson

How you frame a debate is very important. When you call someone an 'illegal alien,' you've already stacked the deck against them.

Erik Larson

The Nazis hijacked the Jewish thing early on by defining it as 'the Jewish problem' and started looking for a solution. These are not just words.

Erik Larson

I wouldn't say that I'm an Italian wine connoisseur. I do like red wine. I guess my favorites now are Bordeauxes. French.

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 subjects, but I don't think of myself necessarily as a dark-humored person. I like having a lot of fun.

Erik Larson

I think, one day, I might actually try writing a bunch of - a collection of essays maybe on the funnier side of the spectrum. I don't know. But it's fun to have, frankly, Twitter as kind of an outlet. When you're writing about dark things all day, it's kind of fun to have fun.

Erik Larson

I had a nice part at big newspapers, small newspapers, and then I went to a very big newspaper - 'The Wall Street Journal.' I wrote longer pieces, and I got tired of working so hard on stories that had a shelf life of essentially one day. So then I started working on longer magazine pieces and realized then that you might as well be writing a book.

Erik Larson

The head of the hurricane research division, Hugh Willoughby, told me that hurricanologists can predict the behavior of storms if those storms behave predictably.

Erik Larson

What is clear is that in 1900, Galveston was growing fast, had already become the number one cotton port on the Gulf Coast, and was already being referred to as 'the New York of the Gulf.'

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 for substantial investment by railroads then seeking to dominate various trans-continental routes.

Erik Larson

The most painstaking phase comes when the manuscript is set in 'type' for the first time and the first proofs of the book are printed. These initial copies are called first-pass proofs or galleys.

Erik Larson

The writer marks the changes he wants to make, while a proofreader also goes through the galley, checking it page-by-page against the manuscript. Once all these changes are identified, a second-pass proof is made, and this, too, gets sent to the author and the proofreader, and the process begins anew.

Erik Larson

There is something about the name Berlin that evokes an image of men in hats and long coats standing under streetlamps on rainy nights.

Erik Larson

I knew Berlin would have to become a kind of character in my new book, 'In the Garden of Beasts'. I had felt likewise about Chicago when I wrote 'The Devil in the White City' and Galveston with 'Isaac's Storm'.

Erik Larson

I figured, correctly, that Berlin in February was not a destination coveted by tourists. I found good airfares on Lufthansa, an airline I quite like, and got a great rate at a brand new Ritz-Carlton, which clearly hoped to seduce visitors into forsaking Hawaii for Potsdammer Platz.

Erik Larson

A writer could spend years reading already-published books just to gain a grasp of the historical terrain.

Erik Larson

I have found from experience that it is often interesting and useful to start from the edges and work inward - another flaw of mine. I seldom approach things directly. I would have made a great moth.

Erik Larson

I knew from an online search that the Wisconsin State Historical Society, on the vast University of Wisconsin campus, held the papers of Sigrid Schultz, a spunky correspondent for the 'Chicago Tribune' who became one of Martha Dodd's friends in Berlin.

Erik Larson

In hunting ideas for books, I look for stories about long-past events that once commanded the world's attention but that, for one reason or another, faded from contemporary awareness.

Erik Larson