Erik Larson Quotes

Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government.

~ Erik Larson

You wish you had not come. If there were not so many around, you would reach out your arms, with the prayer on your lips for it all to come back to you. It seems cruel, cruel, to give us such a vision; to let us dream and drift through heaven for six months, and then to take it out of our lives.

~ Erik Larson

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

~ Erik Larson

He disliked the social obligations of the captaincy.

~ Erik Larson

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

~ Erik Larson

Wasplike with their long slender hulls, these were ships not seen in these waters before. They approached in a line, each flying a large American flag. To the hundreds of onlookers by now gathered on shore, many also carrying American flags, it would be a sight they would never forget and into which they read great meaning. These were the descendants of the colonials returning now at Britain's hour of need....

~ Erik Larson

American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem. Germany's persecution of Jews raised the specter of a vast influx of Jewish refugees at a time when America was reeling from the Depression.

~ Erik Larson

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

~ Erik Larson

But one thing was quite clear…” he wrote. “[B]eing broke didn’t disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time.” Bloom went on to become a congressman and one of the crafters of the charter that founded the United Nations.

~ Erik Larson

They looked more like day laborers than seamen.

~ Erik Larson

There were always those passengers who came aboard bearing grudges against the modern age.

~ Erik Larson

Murder was a fascination as always.

~ Erik Larson

New York's perennial attraction was shopping.

~ Erik Larson

If you had to jump six or seven feet or certainly drown, it's surprising how far even older people will jump.

~ Erik Larson

I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organized affair, but I've learned the devil a lot in the last five minutes.

~ Erik Larson

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

~ Erik Larson

My prophetic task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him.

~ Erik Larson

My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim.

~ 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

One question that often comes up is why, in this age of blogs and tweets and instant digital communication of all kinds, it still takes so long to publish a book.

~ Erik Larson

As a rule, I am very skeptical of tying books to anniversaries. I don't think readers care. I also feel that it just about guarantees that somebody else will be writing a book on the same subject, but being a former journalist, I'm always interested in, like, why write about something today? Why do it now?

~ Erik Larson