After I finish writing a chapter, I’ll print it out, cut it up into paragraphs, and cut away any transition sentences. Then I shuffle all the paragraphs and lay them out as they come. As I arrange and hold them next to each other, very quickly a natural structure for the chapter presents itself. Erik Larson Read Quote
A very important part of my workday are the two Nunzillas on my windowsill. They keep me constant company. They’re little windup toys, and when they move across the desk, they spark from the mouth. I think of them as my editors. They sort of remind you that the world can be a silly place. Erik Larson Read Quote
The one place where I do think our culture today has to be extremely careful is this whole thing about illegal aliens. Because any time you start defining a significant block of the population as ‘others,’ or as less than you, you start getting into dangerous waters. Erik Larson Read Quote
How you frame a debate is very important. When you call someone an ‘illegal alien,’ you’ve already stacked the deck against them. Erik Larson Read Quote
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. Erik Larson Read Quote
I wouldn’t say that I’m an Italian wine connoisseur. I do like red wine. I guess my favorites now are Bordeauxes. French. Erik Larson Read Quote
I’m open to writing just about anything. I love writing the books that I write. They do tend to be on dark subjects, but I don’t think of myself necessarily as a dark-humored person. I like having a lot of fun. Erik Larson Read Quote
I think, one day, I might actually try writing a bunch of – a collection of essays maybe on the funnier side of the spectrum. I don’t know. But it’s fun to have, frankly, Twitter as kind of an outlet. When you’re writing about dark things all day, it’s kind of fun to have fun. Erik Larson Read Quote
I had a nice part at big newspapers, small newspapers, and then I went to a very big newspaper – ‘The Wall Street Journal.’ I wrote longer pieces, and I got tired of working so hard on stories that had a shelf life of essentially one day. So then I started working on longer magazine pieces and realized then that you might as well be writing a book. Erik Larson Read Quote
