Erik Larson Quotes

“At present," he said, "I am responsible for conveying my associates to a place called Chicago. I understand it is somewhere in the hinterland.”

— Erik Larson

He signed the letter: George Washington Gale Ferris.

— Erik Larson

“Holmes was testing his power to bend the lives of people.”

— Erik Larson

“A new phrase was making the rounds in Berlin, to be deployed upon encountering a friend or acquaintance on the street, ideally with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow: "Lebst du noch?" Which meant, "Are you still among the living?”

— Erik Larson

“I tell you we must have bodies. You cannot make doctors without them, and the public must understand it. If we can't get them any other way we will arm the students with Winchester rifles and send them to protect the body-snatchers on their raids.”

— Erik Larson

“As I look back on those days, most people in Chicago felt that way. Chicago was host to the world at that time and we were part of it all.”

— Erik Larson

“In an analogy that would prove all too apt, Max Weber likened the city to a human being with his skin removed.”

— Erik Larson

“There began to appear before my romantic eyes ... a vast and complicated network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate, from which no one, official or private, could escape.”

— Erik Larson

“If you cannot give me all that I want-what my heart finds it hard now to breathe without-it is because I am not worthy. I know instinctively you could give it if I were-and if you understood,-understood the boy's heart that is in me and the simplicity of my need, which you could fill so that all my days would be radiant.”

— Erik Larson

“Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots?”

— Erik Larson

“Would be no skipping and dancing. No heathen. The exposition was a dream city, but it was Burnham's dream. Everywhere”

— Erik Larson

“Hitler's cabinet enacted a new law, to take effect January 1, 1934, called the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, which authorized the sterilization of individuals suffering various physical and mental handicaps.”

— Erik Larson

“Whether out of professional pique or some instinct of fear, the ship's mascot-a cat named Dowie, after Captain Turner's predecessor-fled the ship that night, for points unknown.”

— Erik Larson

“It amused him that women as a class were so wonderfully vulnerable, as if they believed that the codes of conduct that applied in their safe little hometowns, like Alva, Clinton, and Percy, might actually still apply once they had left behind their dusty, kerosene-scented parlors and set out on their own.”

— Erik Larson

“In this day before sonar, a submarine traveled utterly blind, trusting entirely in the accuracy of sea charts. One great fear of all U-boat men was that a half-sunk derelict or an uncharted rock might lie in their path.”

— Erik Larson

“THE SUBMARINE as a weapon had come a long way by this time, certainly to the point where it killed its own crews only rarely.”

— Erik Larson

German navy had its own tradition of assigning nicknames. One very tall commander was nicknamed Seestiefel, or sea boot. Another had a reputation for smelling bad and thus was nicknamed Hein Schniefelig, or stinky person. A third was said to be "very childish and good-natured" and was commonly called Das Kind, the child.

— Erik Larson

“She loved their funny stiff dancing, listening to their incomprehensible and guttural tongue, and watching their simple gestures, natural behavior and childlike eagerness for life.”

— Erik Larson

“It's all right to drill your crew, but why not drill the passengers.”

— Erik Larson

“What most likely caused the second event was the rupture of a main steam line, carrying steam under extreme pressure. This was Turner's theory from the beginning.”

— Erik Larson

“However, in a later interview, housed in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, London, Beesly was less judicious. "As an Englishman and a lover of the Royal Navy," he said, "I would prefer to attribute this failure to negligence, even gross negligence, rather [than] to a conspiracy deliberately to endanger the ship." But, he said, "on the basis of the considerable volume of information which is now available, I am reluctantly compelled to state that on balance, the most likely explanation is that there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war." So much was done for the Orion and other warships, he wrote, but nothing for the Lusitania. He struggled with this. No matter how he arranged the evidence, he came back to conspiracy. He said, "If that's unacceptable, will someone tell me another explanation to these very very curious circumstances?”

— Erik Larson

He was a creature of the last turning of the centuries when sleep seemed to come more easily. Things were clear to him. He was loyal, a believer in dignity, honor, and effort.

— Erik Larson

“It was this big talk, not the persistent southwesterly breeze, that had prompted New York editor Charles Anderson Dana to nickname Chicago the Windy City.”

— Erik Larson

“In losing her he lost not merely his main source of companionship but also his primary adviser, whose observations he had found so useful in helping shape his own thinking.”

— Erik Larson

Upon learning that Hall was the man who had invented the typewriter she used so often, the girl put her arms around his neck and gave him a huge hug and kiss. Forever afterward, whenever Hall told this story of how he met Helen Keller, tears would fill his eyes.

— Erik Larson

“People seemed to believe that technology had stripped hurricanes of their power to kill. No hurricane expert endorsed this view.”

— Erik Larson

“Dodd listened intently as Hitler portrayed Germany as a well-meaning, peace-seeking nation whose modest desire for equality of armaments was being opposed by other nations. 'It was not the address of a thinker,' Dodd wrote in his diary, 'but of an emotionalist claiming that Germany had in no way been responsible for the World War and that she was the victim of wicked enemies.”

— Erik Larson

“Coordination' occurred with astonishing speed, even in sectors of life not directly targeted by specific laws, as Germans willingly placed themselves under the sway of Nazi rule, a phenomenon that became known as Selbtsgleichschaltung, or 'self-coordination.' Change came to Germany so quickly and across such a wide front that German citizens who left the country for business or travel returned to find everything around them altered, as if they were characters in a horror movie who come back to find that people who once were their friends, clients, patients, and customers have become different in ways hard to discern.”

— Erik Larson

“As labor strife increased and the economy faltered, the general level of violence rose.”

— Erik Larson

“If no deliberate plan existed to put the Lusitania in danger, one is left with an unforgivable cock-up as an explanation.”

— Erik Larson

“He glanced back. Two images became impressed in his memory. One was of a collapsible lifeboat slipping from the ship, still sheathed in its protective cover; the other, of Captain Turner in full dress uniform still on the bridge as the Lusitania began its final dive.”

— Erik Larson

It could be done, because it had to be done

— Erik Larson

Yet by tracing the migration of guns, one comes readily and vividly to understand where the nation's current patchwork of gun controls have gone astray, and how easily they could be fixed to the increased satisfaction of gun owners and gun opponents alike.

— Erik Larson

“Her place already was luxurious, with a bowling alley where the pins were bottles of chilled champagne,”

— Erik Larson

“Murder was a fascination as always.”

— Erik Larson

“As a reminder to himself and anyone who visited his office in the shanty, Burnham posted a sign over his desk bearing a single word: RUSH.”

— Erik Larson

“Dodd resigned himself to what he called the delicate work of watching and carefully doing nothing.”

— Erik Larson

A Grape-Nuts ad dealt with warfare, but of the schoolyard variety, extolling the cereal's value in helping children prevail in fistfights: Husky bodies and stout nerves depend-more often than we think-on the food eaten.

— Erik Larson

“Diels told the reporters, The value of the SA and the SS, seen from my viewpoint of inspector-general responsible for the suppression of subversive tendencies and activities, lies in the fact that they spread terror. That is a wholesome thing.”

— Erik Larson

“No one ever remembered a nice day. But no one ever forget the feel of paralyzed fish, the thud of walnut-sized hail against a horse's flank, or the way a superheated wind could turn your eyes to burlap.”

— Erik Larson

“Among a list of measures effective for inducing vomiting, she included: Injections of tobacco into the anus through a pipe stem.”

— Erik Larson

“During World War I, Germany had only 25 of its vaunted submarines sailing at any one time.”

— Erik Larson

“One of those who canceled citing illness was Lady Cosmo Duff-Gordon, a fashion designer who had survived the sinking of the Titanic. Another designer, Philip Mangone, canceled for unspecified reasons. Years later he would find himself aboard the airship Hindenburg, on its fatal last flight; he survived, albeit badly burned. Otherwise, the Lusitania was heavily booked, especially in the lesser classes.”

— Erik Larson

“(Cunard tickets did not identify babies by name, possibly out of quiet resentment that they traveled free.)”

— Erik Larson

It's a great privilege to be permitted to share any part of your thought and confidence. It puts me in spirits again and makes me feel as if my private life had been recreated. But, better than that, it makes me hope that I may be of some use to you, to lighten the days with whole-hearted sympathy and complete understanding. That will be a happiness indeed.

— Erik Larson

“The dedication had been anticipated nationwide. Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth's Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation. He composed a pledge that the Bureau of Education mailed to virtually every school. As originally worded, it began, I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands ...”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

“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 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