Erik Larson

“I do think hubris played a role here as well, the belief that the Lusitania was too big and too fast to ever be caught by any submarine, and that, in any case, no U-boat commander would think to attack the ship because to do so would violate the long-held rules governing naval warfare against merchant shipping.”

“There is something about the name Berlin that evokes an image of men in hats and long coats standing under streetlamps on rainy nights.”

“At first glance, the story of the Lusitania doesn't seem like the sort of thing I would take on. I usually like ideas that are a little bit more complex, things that people don't know about - or maybe they once did, but now you bring it to life for them for the first time.”

“Digression is my passion. I'm not kidding. I love telling the main stories, but in some ways, what I love most is using those narratives as a way of stringing together the interesting stories that people have kind of forgotten and that are kind of surprising.”

“The reason I choose the stories I choose - and it's why it takes me so long to find ideas - is that I'm looking for that very thing. I want an idea that begins, I want a middle that is compelling and will bring readers along, and I definitely want an ending.”

“In 1900, 45 steamship lines served Galveston. Twenty-six foreign governments had consulates there. The storm damaged its reputation as a safe place for substantial investment by railroads then seeking to dominate various trans-continental routes.”

“It's not my intent to write definitive history. 'Dead Wake' isn't a definitive history of the sinking of the Lusitania. It's my account.”

“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.”

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

“Murder was a fascination as always.”

“It's essentially taught in high school and college survey courses as an item on a timeline: 'The Lusitania was sunk; the U.S. gets into World War I'.”

“The sinking of the Lusitania wasn't the proximal cause for the U.S. entering WWI. It was almost two years between the sinking and the war declaration, and President Wilson's request for war never mentions the Lusitania.”

“When I'm considering an idea, and there is an element of hubris involved, I generally feel comfortable that it's going to be a good story. Pride goeth before a fall. It's an element of a lot of big stories.”

“The head of the hurricane research division, Hugh Willoughby, told me that hurricanologists can predict the behavior of storms if those storms behave predictably.”

“There is no secret orchard where ideas grow. Oh my, do I wish there were.”

“At some point in the idea process, I simply wear myself down and force myself to choose. But here's the thing: Once I do choose, suddenly all the other possibilities wither and die, and thus I never have a backlog of well-formed ideas waiting for me when my latest book gets finished.”

“I don't really have a bucket list, but if I did, one entry would be to dust off my college Russian and spend a big chunk of a year reading, or trying to read, 'War and Peace' as it was meant to be read, in Russian, with all that rumbly rocks-on-rocks poetry inherent to the language.”

“It troubled me that we had these reports of torture of detainees, we had people jailed at Guantanamo Bay who couldn't even talk to their lawyers and couldn't see the evidence against them - sort of fundamental bedrock civil liberties things.”

“Yes, William E. Dodd was the - became the - America's first ambassador to Nazi Germany. Prior to that, he was a professor of history at the University of Chicago - mild-mannered guy.”

“I read a book called 'Transatlantic', which is a history of the great shipping lines. Also, of course, I had read about the Titanic and saw Leo drowning at the end of the 'Titanic' movie and all that stuff.”