305 Quotes by 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.

I write to be read. I'm quite direct about that. I'm not writing to thrill colleagues or to impress the professors at the University of Iowa; that's not my goal.

I'd always been interested in maritime history, especially the great liners. I'd have done a book about the Titanic if it hadn't already been done to death by James Cameron and Celine Dion.

The Lusitania is a monument to this optimism, to the hubris of the era. I love that, because where there is hubris, there is tragedy.

That's what I love about history - nuance. I don't believe in unalloyed heroes. Everyone's got warts, and everyone's got a surprise side.

I find diplomatic histories the dullest of histories.

I started deliberately looking for characters, ideally outsiders and ideally Americans. So I just started reading widely, as I tell my students to do: read voraciously and promiscuously.

I usually look for stories with barriers to entry, something complex enough that no one else is going to do it.

I found a book facing out that I'd always meant to read: William Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.' About a third of the way through, I suddenly, finally caught up to the fact that Shirer had been there in Berlin, from 1934 on, and was finally kicked out when the U.S. entered the war.