Top 100 Erik Larson Quotes

#1. She saw Hitler as "a clown who looked like Charlie Chaplin." Like many others in America at this time and elsewhere in the world, she could not imagine him lasting very long or being taken seriously.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #6965
#2. A Bridgeport, Connecticut, man presented his girlfriend with an engagement ring and handed her one end of a ribbon; the other end disappeared into his pocket. "A surprise," he said, and urged her to pull it. She obliged. The ribbon was attached to the trigger of a revolver. The man died instantly.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #10023
#3. If you had to jump six or seven feet or certainly drown, it's surprising how far even older people will jump.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #17257
#4. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #30090
#5. Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #35041
#6. This is the story of Isaac and his time in America, the last turning of the centuries, when the hubris of men led them to believe they could disregard even nature itself.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #45214
#7. It had swept him, he said, "into a dream from which I did not recover for months.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #57771
#8. The city's legions of working men disagreed. They always had counted Harrison as one of their own, "Our Carter," even though he was a plantation-reared Kentucky man who had gone to Yale, spoke fluent French and German, and recited lengthy passages from Shakespeare.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #63068
#9. had become friends and met often

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #74956
#10. Her place already was luxurious, with a bowling alley where the pins were bottles of chilled champagne,

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #77385
#11. Camille's rain fell with such ferocity it was said to have filled the overhead nostrils of birds and drowned them from the trees.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #83000
#12. I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when you come." For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #91991
#13. He became one of the few voices in U.S. government to warn of the true ambitions of Hitler

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #102359
#14. As labor strife increased and the economy faltered, the general level of violence rose.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #106088
#15. Recalling his first impression of Hitler, Hanfstaengl wrote, Hitler looked like a suburban hairdresser on his day off.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #109379
#16. New York's perennial attraction was shopping.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #110169
#17. Although her book did include compelling recipes for scrapple, ox cheek, and baked calf's head and tips for the preparation of raccoon, possum, snipe, plovers, and blackbirds (for blackbird pie) and "how to broil, fricassee, stew or fry a squirrel," it was much more than just a cookbook.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #110249
#18. One can evade a danger that one recognizes,' wrote historian Friedrich Zipfel, 'but a police working in the dark becomes uncanny. Nowhere does one feel safe from it. While not omnipresent, it could appear, search arrest. The worried citizen no longer knows whom he ought to trust.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #111653
#19. It's a hindrance to be lonely and isolated in one's work. Ideas stimulate ideas, and the love of writing is contagious." Martha

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #111718
#20. Why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #123549
#21. He knew that his day was coming to an end. On July 4, 1909, as he stood with friends on the roof of the Reliance Building, looking out over the city he adored, he said, You'll see it lovely. I never will. But it WILL be lovely.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #136207
#22. Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.
Daniel H. Burnham

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #139453
#23. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #144743
#24. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #145441
#25. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #145634
#26. Expected, well suited to Germany's guerrilla

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #179186
#27. Time lost can never be recovered ... and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #185061
#28. This prolonging of a man's life doesn't interest me when he's done his work and has done it pretty well.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #185988
#29. I found the actual notes that Prendergast sent to Alfred Trude. I saw how deeply the pencil dug into the paper.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #189360
#30. After noting that Germany's submarine campaign had sharply reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: For our part, we want the traffic - the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #191536
#31. Turner, that day, was master of one of the great greyhounds of the North Atlantic - and looked the part.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #242375
#32. Sun shines," wrote Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin Stories, "and Hitler is the master of this city. The sun shines, and dozens of my friends ... are in prison, possibly dead." The

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #245885
#33. General Electric rather miraculously came back with a bid of $554,000. But Westinghouse, whose AC system was inherently cheaper and more efficient, bid $399,000. The exposition went with Westinghouse, and helped change the history of electricity.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #246386
#34. People seemed to believe that technology had stripped hurricanes of their power to kill. No hurricane expert endorsed this view.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #256370
#35. One portion of the lakefront, named Burnham Park in his honor, contains Soldier Field and the Field Museum, which he designed.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #294281
#36. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #320492
#37. The outcome was clear to Dodd well before the votes were counted. He wrote to Roosevelt, "The election here is a farce." Nothing indicated this more clearly than the vote within the camp at Dachau: 2,154 of 2,242 prisoners - 96 percent - voted in favor of Hitler's government. On

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #330758
#38. Ned watched her. She was young and pretty - a "handsome blonde," as he later described her.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #352624
#39. The president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, attended its grand opening.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #358276
#40. What I have now at your generous hands is infinitely precious to me. It would kill me to part with it, - I could not and I hope you could not. And I will be patient, patient without end, to see what, if anything, the future may have [in] store for me.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #365736
#41. I didn't believe all her stories," Martha wrote later. "I thought she was exaggerating and a bit hysterical." When Martha left her hotel she witnessed no violence, saw no one cowering in fear, felt no oppression.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #367911
#42. At one point during the Holmes investigation Chicago's chief of police told a Tribune reporter he'd just as soon have a squad of reporters under his command as detectives.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #376288
#43. He knew not only WHAT to wear, but HOW to wear it.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #387883
#44. I went to Harvard for examination with two men not as well prepared as I. Both passed easily, and I flunked, having sat through two or three examinations without being able to write a word.' The same happened at Yale, Both schools turned him down. He never forgot it.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #394522
#45. Would be no skipping and dancing. No heathen. The exposition was a dream city, but it was Burnham's dream. Everywhere

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #413422
#46. Cherbourg was leaving Liverpool, the ship

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #426362
#47. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #428109
#48. Dodd resigned himself to what he called the delicate work of watching and carefully doing nothing.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #440826
#49. Berliners came to practice what became known as "the German glance" - der deutsche Blick - a quick look in all directions when encountering a friend or acquaintance on the street.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #444308
#50. Perhaps, Herr Ditzen, it is less important where one lives than how one lives.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #444774
#51. Once built, the Montauk was so novel, so tall, it defied description by conventional means. No one knows who coined the term, but it fit, and the Montauk became the first building to be called a skyscraper.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #449776
#52. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #449870
#53. Holmes was testing his power to bend the lives of people.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #475092
#54. Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #479248
#55. She asked, what would he do if a lady happened to insist? Turner replied, Madam, do you think that would be a lady?

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #480713
#56. In traveling about the city that day, Dodd was struck anew by the "extraordinary" German penchant for Christmas display. He saw Christmas trees everywhere, in every public square and every window. "One might think," he wrote, "the Germans believed in Jesus or practiced his teachings!

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #507317
#57. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #507970
#58. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #528243
#59. British currency was configured in pounds, shillings, and pence. One pound equaled twenty shillings, written as 20 s., which in turn equaled 240 pence, or 240 d. A new pound is equal to 100 pennies, with one penny equal to 2.4 of the obsolete pence.)

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #535608
#60. Following my between-books strategy of reading voraciously and promiscuously. What

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #552899
#61. We, of course, have the power of hindsight in our arsenal, but people living in Berlin in that era didn't. What would that have been like as this darkness fell over Germany?

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #553551
#62. (Cunard tickets did not identify babies by name, possibly out of quiet resentment that they traveled free.)

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #555699
#63. U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #577021
#64. Some captains made no attempt to save the lives of merchant seamen; others went so far as to tow lifeboats towards land. One u-boat commander sent the captain of a torpedoed ship three bottles of wine to ease the long row ashore.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #621090
#65. He died angry," Chalmers said, "because I didn't believe him. Even in death he is emphatic and imperious.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #631118
#66. Lost children filled every chair at the headquarters of the Columbian Guard; nineteen spent the night and were claimed by their parents the next day.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #640675
#67. Stand with your back to the wind," he said, "and the barometer will be lower on your left than on your right.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #644457
#68. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #645018
#69. In Calumet a thousand ornate streetlamps stood in a swamp, where they did nothing but ignite the fog and summon auras of mosquitoes.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #649588
#70. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #660163
#71. Such peaceful intervals never lasted long.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #670993
#72. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #673369
#73. With the physique of a bank safe, he was the embodiment of quiet strength.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #673874
#74. He slashed her throat in a Van Gogh stroke that nearly removed her head from her spine.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #674874
#75. After experiencing life in Nazi Germany, Thomas Wolfe wrote, Here was an entire nation ... infested with the contagion of an ever-present fear. It was a kind of creeping paralysis which twisted and blighted all human relations.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #679946
#76. No system which implies control by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #680566
#77. Dodd acknowledged Congress's reluctance to become entangled abroad but added, "I do, however, think facts count; even if we hate them.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #691881
#78. I find it all infinitely sad, but at the same time so entrancing, that I often feel as if it would be the part of wisdom to fly at once to the woods or mountains where one can always find peace. - Dora Root in a letter to Daniel Burnham

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #694038
#79. What Edith did not yet appreciate was that Wilson was now a man in love, and as White House usher Ike Hoover observed, Wilson was "no mean man in love-making when once the germ has found its resting place.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #700320
#80. a butterfly in a West African rain forest, by flitting to the left of a tree rather than to the right, possibly set into motion a chain of events that escalates into a hurricane striking coastal South Carolina a few weeks later?

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #723299
#81. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #735700
#82. gin daisy, which

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #739793
#83. The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a dead wake.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #762540
#84. In Minneapolis there had been only silence and the inevitable clumsy petitions of potato-fingered men looking for someone, anyone, to share the agony of their days. That

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #770687
#85. Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #773161
#86. If no deliberate plan existed to put the Lusitania in danger, one is left with an unforgivable cock-up as an explanation.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #777192
#87. MARTHA'S CHEERY VIEW of things was widely shared by outsiders visiting Germany and especially Berlin. The fact was that on most days in most neighborhoods the city looked and functioned as it always had.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #800297
#88. The ranks included a carpenter and furniture-maker named Elias Disney, who in coming years would tell many stories about the construction of this magical realm beside the lake. His son Walt would take note.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #802448
#89. Once again no one in the U.S. government had made any public statement either supporting the trial or criticizing the Hitler regime. The question remained: what was everyone afraid of?

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #823544
#90. Her blind endorsement of Hitler's regime first faded to a kind of sympathetic skepticism, but as summer approached,

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #825487
#91. During World War I, Germany had only 25 of its vaunted submarines sailing at any one time.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #830801
#92. I was born with the devil in me,' [Holmes] wrote. 'I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #838782
#93. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #849726
#94. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #851213
#95. 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

Erik Larson Quotes #878631
#96. They tasted a new snack called Cracker Jack and a new breakfast food called Shredded Wheat.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #880580
#97. look as if they had been plucked from the Palace of Versailles or a Jacobean mansion - that you were aboard a ship being propelled far into the bluest reaches of the ocean.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #884015
#98. Messersmith, in a dispatch, observed that even smart, well-traveled Germans will "sit and calmly tell you the most extraordinary fairy tales.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #888389
#99. I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #928316
#100. It's all right to drill your crew, but why not drill the passengers.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson Quotes #947432

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