Erik Larson Quotations

No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck.

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.

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.

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

I pride myself on having a journalistic remove.

Place has always been important to me, and one thing today's Chicago exudes, as it did in 1893, is a sense of place. I fell in love with the city, the people I encountered, and above all the lake and its moods, which shift so readily from season to season, day to day, even hour to hour.

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.

. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

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

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